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Preparation of Croquettes
21-8 teaspoon salt teaspoon pepper In general, use equal amounts of white sauce and meat. Less will be needed if meat is freshly cooked than if canned meat is used. Meat should be chopped fine, seasoned rather highly, then moistened with sauce as soft as can be handled. Let chill thoroughly on flat dish, then divide evenly into separate portions, allowing 2 tablespoons for each croquette. Shape into balls, cylinders, cones or any desired shape. Roll and sift dry crumbs, beat egg with 1 tablespoon water. Roll croquettes in crumbs, dip in egg, again roll in crumbs, and fry in deep fat, till light brown in color. Drain on oiled paper. They may be served with sauce. Any meat or combination of meats may be used. Fish, eggs and macaroni may be used in same way. Seasoning may be onion, parsley, celery salt. Lemon juice combines well with fish or chicken. ½ cup butter 2 egg yolks
This is a master method rather than a fixed recipe, and the page has been scrambled in setting: the stray "1/8 teaspoon salt," "teaspoon pepper," "½ cup butter" and "2 egg yolks" are fragments of the thick white sauce that belongs with it. Treat the running paragraph as the instructions and supply your own binding sauce.
- The hinge: the sauce must be a panade, not a pouring sauceThe hinge: the sauce must be stiff, not a pouring sauce -- Croquettes hold together because the white sauce is thick enough to set solid when cold; the recipe's own test is a mixture "as soft as can be handled." Make the sauce much thicker than a medium white sauce, cooked until it pulls away from the pan. The stray ½ cup butter and 2 egg yolks at the end of the page appear to belong to that binding sauce, though the page as set does not say how they were used. An ordinary medium white sauce will give you a mixture that collapses in the fat.
- "Equal amounts of white sauce and meat"Measured by volume, and 1 cup of each will give about sixteen croquettes at the 2 tablespoons specified. Canned meat is drier and absorbs more, which is what the second sentence is getting at.
- Chill means chillTwo hours in the refrigerator, or overnight. The instruction to spread on a flat dish is the point: a shallow layer cools fast and evenly. Shaping warm mixture is the usual cause of croquettes bursting.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "fry in deep fat" and gives no test for it. In a modern kitchen use about 375F: below that the crumb crust soaks fat before it sets; above it the outside colors before the center is hot.
- The double coating is deliberateCrumbs, then egg, then crumbs again. Skipping the first dry coat leaves wet egg against a wet filling and the shell splits. Chill the breaded croquettes another 20 minutes before frying if the kitchen is warm.
- "Dry crumbs," rolled and siftedMeaning stale bread dried out and crushed fine, closer to modern plain dried breadcrumbs than to panko. Fresh soft crumbs will not brown evenly.
- Drain on oiled paperThe paper is oiled so the hot croquettes do not stick to it. A wire rack over a tray will keep the crust crisper.
- ServingThe recipe says only that they "may be served with sauce," without naming one. Two to three croquettes a person makes a reasonable main-course portion.
Croquettes are French in origin — the name comes from croquer, to crunch — and by the time this book appeared they were often put forward as a way of dealing with Sunday's roast on Tuesday. The technique is essentially a thick béchamel used as glue, a trick that lets a small quantity of chicken, veal or fish feed a family. Books like this one leaned hard on economy and on general methods that a cook could apply to whatever was in the icebox; hence the closing list of substitutions rather than a single named dish. The deep-fat croquette fell out of domestic favor in the later twentieth century, though it survives intact in Dutch kroketten, Spanish croquetas and Japanese korokke, all built on the same chilled, bound paste.