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Eggs Croquette, Mignonette
Heat in a saucepan one tablespoon melted butter, adding three finely chopped shallots and brown three minutes. Add one tablespoon flour, mix a little, pour one gill cream over, add half teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, one saltspoon chopped chervil and one saltspoon chopped tarragon, and continually mix until it comes to a boil.
Cut eight hard-boiled eggs in squares and add to pan. Season with half teaspoon salt, one saltspoon cayenne and a saltspoon grated nutmeg, mix well and let cook five minutes. Add an ounce butter and two tablespoons sherry, mix well. Transfer to a dish and let get cold. Divide in twelve even parts, then roll on a lightly floured table to cork forms, dip in beaten egg, then in fresh bread crumbs. Arrange in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat five minutes. Lift up, drain on a cloth, dress on a dish with a folded napkin, decorate with a little parsley greens and serve.
A hard-boiled egg croquette bound in a small herbed cream sauce, shaped into cylinders and deep-fried. The whole dish stands or falls on the binding being cold and firm before you shape it.
- Chill it hardThe mixture must be refrigerated until genuinely solid, several hours or overnight, not merely "cold." Warm or tacky egg mixture will burst its crumb coat in the fat and empty into the fryer.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. One tablespoon of flour to a gill of cream makes a thin binding for eight chopped eggs; expect a soft mass, and if it will not hold a shape after chilling, work in more of a thicker roux-based sauce rather than trying to force the roll.
- A saltspoonA quarter teaspoon. That is a quarter teaspoon of cayenne across twelve croquettes, which is assertive but not extreme, and the same quantity of grated nutmeg.
- Frying temperature"Boiling fat" means fat at frying heat, 350-375F, not fat that is bubbling from moisture. Test with a crumb: it should sizzle briskly and brown in under a minute.
- Five minutes is too longEverything inside is already cooked; the fry is only to crisp the crumb. Two to three minutes at 365F gives a deep gold shell. Five minutes drives heat into the centre, loosens the binding and invites splitting.
- Cork formsCylinders roughly the size of a wine cork, a little larger, with flat ends. Roll them on a floured board, then bread them, and for reliability bread them twice: egg, crumb, egg, crumb, with a rest in the fridge after.
- Chervil and tarragonFresh chervil is hard to find; a little extra parsley with a few tarragon leaves stands in reasonably, since tarragon carries the anise note chervil only hints at. Dried chervil contributes almost nothing.
- YieldTwelve croquettes, enough for four as a lunch dish with a salad, or six as a first course. The folded napkin and parsley garnish are period service; a rack-drained plate does the same work.
Croquettes were one of the great economies of the professional kitchen: a thick sauce, something chopped into it, a crumb coat and hot fat, and yesterday's material becomes a course with a French name. The word comes from croquer, to crunch. "Mignonette" here appears to be used loosely as a kitchen tag for something small and neat rather than as a reference to the coarse-cracked pepper of the same name. The herb mixture of parsley, chervil and tarragon is most of a classic fines herbes blend, minus the chives, and suggests a professional kitchen working in the French tradition. Hard-boiled eggs bound in cream sauce were a familiar meatless-day resource.