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Lobster Croquettes, Sauce Italienne
Prepare a lobster forcemeat. Divide forcemeat in six equal parts and roll out on a lightly floured table to nice croquette forms. Dip in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs, arrange in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat ten minutes. Lift up, drain well on cloth, pour an Italian sauce on a hot dish, dress croquettes over, adjust a fancy frill paper at end of each croquette and serve.
A brief professional-kitchen note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you can make a lobster forcemeat and an Italian sauce from elsewhere in the book. Two things need attention — the frying time and the temperature of the mixture before you shape it.
- Ten minutes is far too longA croquette of cooked lobster forcemeat only needs its crust set and its centre heated: 3 to 4 minutes at 350–375°F. Ten minutes at frying heat will darken the crumb badly and dry the lobster to cotton.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously round anything dropped in it, roughly 350–375°F. Use a thermometer and fry in two batches so the temperature does not crash.
- Chill the forcemeat firstThe hinge of the dish. If the forcemeat is bound with a thick sauce, spread it on a tray and refrigerate until firm before rolling; a warm or soft mixture is likely to burst its coating in the fat.
- ForcemeatHere it most likely means diced or pounded cooked lobster bound with a very stiff bechamel or panada, seasoned and cooled, rather than a raw sausage stuffing.
- Sauce ItalienneA brown sauce (demi-glace) finished with duxelles of mushroom, shallot, sometimes lean ham, white wine, tomato and chopped parsley. A fish-stock version, based on a fish veloute or fumet rather than meat glaze, was also made for fish and shellfish.
- Egg and crumbThe classic à l'anglaise sequence works better with a light dusting of flour first, then egg, then crumbs; a second pass through egg and crumbs gives a shell that will not split. Dry fine crumbs, not fresh, or the surface goes patchy.
- Frill papersPaper cuffs slipped over the end of a cutlet-shaped croquette, a common decorative finish of the period. Purely decorative and now easy to leave off.
- YieldSix croquettes. The sauce goes beneath, as the recipe directs, rather than poured over, which would soften the crust.
Croquettes belong to the era when French professional cookery reached its widest audience in English-language hotel and household books, and the lobster version was a familiar item on American restaurant menus. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the whole technique depends on a bound, chilled mixture rather than on any binder in the crumb. Sauce italienne is one of the small compound sauces catalogued in the classical repertoire, distinguished by its duxelles of finely chopped mushroom and shallot; its Italian name is customarily explained by the mushroom-and-ham garnish rather than by any dish actually served in Italy, though the explanation is not documented. The instruction to fit a fancy frill paper on each croquette is a reminder that this is a book written with waiter service in mind, where the croquettes arrive dressed over a mirror of sauce on a hot silver platter.