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Potato Croquettes
1/2 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon white pepper teaspoon salt 1 egg or 2 yolks 2 tablespoons butter 1 teaspoon celery salt Beat the eggs, mix with potatoes and add other ingredients. A little milk is sometimes needed if potatoes are dry. Heat mixture in a saucepan stirring; when it leaves the side of the pan, turn it on to flat dish; when cool divide, shape, crumb and fry.
A standard croquette method: stiff seasoned potato, dried out over heat, chilled, shaped, breaded and deep fried. The recipe assumes a cook who knows the breading and frying drill, so the details worth spelling out are the ones it leaves silent.
- Quantity of potatoThe printed text is cut off before the potato measure, but the seasonings given suit roughly 2 lb of potatoes, mashed dry and unseasoned (about 4 cups). Use a floury baking potato and rice or mash it while hot with no added liquid; waxy potatoes and a food processor both tend to give a gluey mix that is more likely to burst in the fat.
- Drying the mixtureThis is the hinge. Stirring over heat until the paste pulls cleanly away from the pan sides drives off moisture, and moisture is what makes croquettes split open in the oil. Do not rush it, and do not skip it because the potato already looks dry.
- "A little milk if potatoes are dry"Add it a spoonful at a time, and only if the mass will not hold together at all. Too much and no amount of cooking down will save the mixture.
- Chilling before shaping"When cool" is best read as thoroughly cold. Spread the paste no more than an inch thick on the flat dish and refrigerate at least an hour; cold paste shapes cleanly and holds its form in the fat.
- "Crumb"Meaning the full breading sequence: fine dry crumbs, then beaten egg thinned with a spoonful of water, then crumbs again. A single coat leaks. Rest the breaded croquettes 15 minutes before frying to set the crust.
- FryingDeep fry at 375F for about 2 to 3 minutes, until deep gold. The filling is already cooked, so the only job is crust colour; cooler fat soaks the coating and hotter fat browns before the centre warms through.
- Celery saltStill sold, and still assertive. With a teaspoon of celery salt plus the plain salt, taste the paste before shaping rather than salting by the printed measure.
- YieldOn the 2 lb estimate above, about 12 to 16 croquettes, serving four to six as a side.
Croquettes were a common answer to leftovers in the American home kitchen from the later nineteenth century onward, and potato croquettes appear in a great many general cookbooks of the period. The name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the technique came with the professional French cooking that shaped middle-class American cookery through the late nineteenth century.