Home › The World's Kitchen › Rice Croquettes with Currants
Rice Croquettes with Currants
Place five ounces well-cleaned rice in a saucepan with a half pint water, two saltspoons salt and let slowly boil for fifteen minutes, then add a pint milk, four ounces sugar, the rind of a sound lemon and a vanilla bean; lightly mix and let gently boil for forty minutes longer. Add two ounces well-picked currants, lightly mix and cook for fifteen minutes. Add two egg yolks, sharply mix for two minutes, remove the pan from the fire, take up the lemon peel and vanilla bean, wipe the vanilla and place it in sugar. Place the rice on a dish, let get cold and divide into twelve even parts, giving them nice cake forms. Dip in beaten egg, then lightly roll in fresh bread crumbs, fry in boiling fat for six minutes and drain on a cloth. Thoroughly mix in a bowl three tablespoons currant jelly with a half ounce sugar and gill strawberry syrup; pour the sauce on a dish, arrange the croquettes and sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
A sweet rice pudding stiffened with egg yolk, shaped, crumbed and fried — closer to a fritter than to a savoury croquette. The whole thing hinges on the rice being cooked dry enough and chilled hard enough to hold a shape.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two are half a teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, 4 fl oz, of strawberry syrup.
- The riceFive ounces is about ¾ cup. The recipe says only 'well-cleaned rice'; a short-grain or round pudding rice releases more starch and will give the stickiest, most easily shaped mixture, while a long-grain rice tends to bind less well.
- Currants means driedZante currants, the small dried grapes sold beside raisins, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Well-picked" means going through them for stems and grit.
- Adding the yolksTake the pan off direct heat before the yolks go in, or beat a spoonful of the hot rice into the yolks first. Two minutes of sharp mixing in a pan still on the fire will scramble them.
- Chilling is not optional"Let get cold" means several hours in the refrigerator, spread in a shallow layer so it firms all the way through. Warm rice will not shape and will burst in the fryer.
- Frying timeSix minutes is far too long at any workable temperature. At 350–360F the croquettes are golden in two to three minutes; they are already cooked through and only need the crumb set.
- The vanilla beanRinsing and burying the used pod in sugar is a thrift measure worth keeping — it gives vanilla sugar, and the pod can be used once or twice more.
- The sauceCurrant jelly, sugar and strawberry syrup whisked cold gives a loose, very sweet coulis. If it will not come smooth, warm it briefly and cool it again before pooling it on the plate.
- YieldTwelve croquettes, two per person for six as a dessert.
The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, who spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and it reflects the pan-European repertoire that American hotel dining rooms were expected to command. Rice croquettes belong squarely to the French tradition of croquettes de riz: a thick sweetened rice pudding bound with yolk, chilled, breaded and deep-fried, a way of turning a nursery dish into something a waiter could plate. The currants are Zante currants, dried grapes shipped in quantity from Greece and a staple of nineteenth-century baking, cheap enough that they show up in everything from buns to puddings. The strawberry-and-currant-jelly sauce may well have been typical of the period's restaurant sweets, though how commonly a bright, sugary syrup was preferred to a custard or cream under fried pastry is harder to say.