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December 16
Menu: Baked Fish Pudding; Galantine of Veal; Pea Croquettes, Tomato Sauce; Cream Cheese Salad; Chocolate Meringues Coffee Pea Croquettes-Boil 1 cup dried peas that have been soaked over night, till tender, strain and press through sieve. Fry 1 chopped onion in 1 tablespoon Crisco, add to peas, with 1 tablespoon melted Crisco, 2 tablespoons flour, salt and pepper to taste, 2 beaten eggs, and breadcrumbs to make stiff enough to form into croquettes. Brush over with beaten egg, toss in breadcrumbs, and fry golden brown in hot Crisco. Serve hot with tomato sauce.
The heading belongs to the menu this item sat under; the text itself is a straightforward dried-pea croquette. It is a sound recipe, but the quantities are loose and the frying instruction assumes a cook who knows fat by sight.
- Crisco and substitutesCrisco was the reason this book existed, and the recipe uses it three ways: to sweat the onion, to enrich the purée, and as the frying fat. Any neutral solid or liquid fat works; butter will brown too fast at frying heat.
- Dried peasProbably whole dried green or yellow peas, since the recipe calls for overnight soaking; split peas would also work and cook faster. Expect 1 cup dried to yield roughly 2 to 2½ cups cooked, and simmer 45 to 60 minutes for whole peas after soaking.
- "Strain and press through sieve"The point is a dry, stiff purée. Drain thoroughly and let the peas steam off in the pan for a minute before sieving; a food mill or ricer does the same job, and a processor will work if you resist adding liquid.
- The hinge: a stiff mixtureCroquettes fall apart because the paste is too wet. The breadcrumb quantity is deliberately unstated because it depends on how dry your purée is. Chill the shaped croquettes at least 30 minutes before breading and frying.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only 'hot Crisco'. By modern practice that is around 350 to 375F, with enough fat for the croquettes to float. Below that they absorb fat; much above and the crumb coat colours before the centre heats through. Two to three minutes a batch.
- SeasoningDried peas are bland and absorb salt heavily. Season the purée assertively while it is warm and taste before the eggs go in.
- YieldProbably about 8 to 10 croquettes, enough for four as a side or two or three as a meatless main course.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach cooks what to do with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a product that had no place in any existing kitchen tradition and so needed one built for it. The dated 'December 17' heading places this recipe in the Crisco calendar-of-dinners format, which assigns a menu to each day of the year. Croquettes of any leftover or cheap purée were a fixture of Anglo-American cookery from the late nineteenth century onward: they stretched a small amount of food, used up the deep fat a household already kept, and arrived at the table looking considered. Crisco's selling point was that the same fat could fry a savoury croquette in the evening and a doughnut the next morning without carrying flavour between them.