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Pear of Turkey, Sauce Paprika
Pick all meat off turkey left over from yesterday and cut in small, square pieces, then proceed to make a croquette preparation. When force is thoroughly cold divide it in twelve equal parts, roll out on a lightly floured table to pear shape, dip in beaten eggs, lightly roll in bread crumbs, arrange in a frying basket, fry in boiling fat for ten minutes, lift up and let drain. Pour a cream paprika sauce over, dress pears over sauce, adjust a curled paper at end of each pear and serve.
A leftover-turkey croquette dressed up as a pear, from a period when shaping forcemeat into fruit was a mark of a serious kitchen. The original assumes you already know the house croquette method, so most of the work is filling in what it leaves out.
- "Croquette preparation" and "force"Both mean forcemeat: the diced turkey bound with a very thick béchamel or veloute u2014 roughly 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and 3/4 cup milk or stock per pound of meat, cooked until it pulls from the pan, seasoned, then enriched with an egg yolk. It must be spread on a plate and chilled several hours, ideally overnight; warm forcemeat will not hold a pear shape and will burst in the fat.
- Frying timeTen minutes is far too long for a cooked filling. At 350-375F the crumb coat colours in 3 to 4 minutes, which is all that is needed since nothing inside is raw. Longer and the binding boils, splits the crust and leaks.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously when the food goes in, about 360F. Use a thermometer and fry no more than three or four pears at once so the temperature holds.
- Double-crumbingThe single egg-and-crumb pass given here is the minimum. For deep frying, crumb once, rest 15 minutes in the refrigerator, then egg and crumb again; the seam where the pear was rolled closed is where failures start.
- Cream paprika sauceA bechamel or reduced cream sauce with sweet Hungarian paprika stirred in off the heat; the recipe gives no quantity, so season to taste, starting light. Paprika scorches and turns bitter if it hits hot fat or a boiling pan, so add it late.
- The curled paperA paper frill, cut from a folded strip of parchment and fitted to the narrow end of each pear. Purely decorative, and easily skipped.
- PlatingThe recipe's own wording, 'dress pears over sauce', puts the sauce on the platter first with the pears set on top, which keeps the crust crisper than sauce poured over them.
- YieldTwelve pears, as the recipe directs; the weight of picked turkey and the number of servings are not given.
This belongs to the tradition of the shaped croquette, common in hotel and restaurant cookery from the later nineteenth century into the 1920s: leftover meat was bound stiff with panada, moulded into cutlets, cork shapes, cones, or—as here—fruit, and finished with a paper frill. The conceit was that thrift should not look like thrift, and the day-after-turkey pear is that logic at its plainest. The paprika sauce suggests a date later than the plain white-sauce croquette; sweet Hungarian paprika became familiar in American professional kitchens around the turn of the twentieth century, and 'sauce paprika' and 'a la Hongroise' appear in hotel cookbooks of the period. The word force, used here as a noun, is a kitchen shortening of forcemeat, which derives from the French farce, stuffing.