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Potato Croquettes
Have a preparation ready, as per potato brioche. Divide it into six equal parts, dredge a little flour on a corner of the table, roll out each piece to cork shape. Dip them in a beaten-up egg, then roll lightly in bread crumbs; arrange in a frying basket and fry in boiling fat for five minutes. Lift them up, thoroughly drain, dress on a hot dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A cross-referenced recipe: everything depends on the potato mixture made elsewhere in the book, which is the standard duchesse-style base of dry mashed potato bound with egg yolk and butter. The frying itself is a matter of two or three minutes.
- The base mixture"Potato brioche" is a cross-reference to another recipe in the book; such bases are typically riced or sieved potato, cooked very dry and bound with butter and egg yolk, seasoned to taste. Whatever the exact formula, if the mixture is wet the croquettes burst in the fat; drive off moisture by returning the mash to a dry pan over low heat before adding the egg.
- Chill before shapingChilling -- The original goes straight from mixture to fryer. An hour in the refrigerator after shaping firms the cylinders and helps the crumb coat adhere, which does much to prevent splitting.
- "Cork shape"A short, blunt-ended cylinder, roughly cork-like; something on the order of 2 1/2 to 3 inches long and an inch thick would suit. The batch size is not stated, so how large six pieces come out will vary; smaller ones fry more evenly.
- BreadingFlour, then beaten egg, then crumbs, in that order. The text dredges flour on the table rather than on the croquettes; a light all-over dusting of flour before the egg gives a coat that holds.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means deep fat at frying heat, 360-375F. Below that the crumb soaks; above it the outside colours before the centre is hot.
- Five minutes is too longThe filling is already cooked, so you are only crisping the shell and heating the middle. Two to three minutes at 375F gives the colour wanted; five minutes at that heat tends to swell and rupture them.
- Draining and the napkinDrain on a rack rather than in the basket, where steam softens the crust. The folded napkin on the hot dish is period service — it absorbs fat and keeps the croquettes from sliding; paper serves the same purpose.
- YieldSix croquettes, as the recipe divides the preparation into six equal parts; as a side dish that is two or three portions.
Croquettes belong to the French professional kitchen, where they were the standard way of turning a cooked, bound mixture — potato, poultry, veal, rice — into something that could be shaped, crumbed and fried to order; the word and the technique appear in French cookery writing well before 1800. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the whole point is the contrast between the brittle crumb shell and the soft interior. Potato versions suited hotel and restaurant cookery because the duchesse mixture they are built on was already in daily use for piped potato borders and garnishes, so a kitchen making one had the other for free. The instruction to dress them on a folded napkin marks the recipe as service-minded rather than domestic: it is how fried items were sent to table in dining rooms of the period, and books like this one carried the convention into the home kitchen along with the technique.