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December 18
Menu: Fillets of Flounder; Tournedos of Beef; Tomato Croquettes; Celery Mayonnaise Orange Tartlets; Coffee Tomato Croquettes-Cook 1 quart tomatoes until reduced to 2 cups. Add to them 2 cups crumbs, 3 tablespoons melted Crisco, 1/2 teaspoon salt, dust sugar, 14 teaspoon pepper, pinch red pepper, and dust of nutmeg. Set away to cool. Shape into croquettes, roll in flour, brush over with beaten egg, toss in crumbs and fry in hot Crisco.
A thrifty croquette built on reduced tomato and breadcrumbs rather than meat or potato. The whole thing hinges on cooking the tomatoes down far enough and chilling the mixture hard before shaping.
- Reduce, then reduce moreOne quart of tomatoes to two cups is a 50 percent reduction, and it takes 25-40 minutes of open simmering. If the mixture still slumps on the spoon, keep going; a wet base will burst in the fat.
- CrumbsThe recipe does not say what kind of crumbs. Dry crumbs will absorb more of the tomato and bind better; fresh soft crumbs are likely to leave the mixture loose. Panko is too coarse for the interior, though it works well for the outer coating.
- CriscoThe book's house fat is a hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Any neutral solid or liquid frying fat will serve here; the three tablespoons melted into the mixture are chiefly for richness, though a solid fat will also firm the chilled mixture somewhat.
- Chilling is not optional"Set away to cool" means cold all the way through, at least two hours in the refrigerator and preferably overnight. Croquettes shaped from a warm mixture come apart the moment they hit the fat.
- Pepper quantityThe pepper measure has lost its fraction in the original text. A quarter teaspoon of black pepper suits this volume; the pinch of red pepper and the dust of nutmeg are meant to be barely detectable.
- FryingThe recipe says only "hot Crisco" and does not specify depth or temperature. Modern deep-frying practice for croquettes is 365-375F with enough fat to submerge them; shallow frying in a skillet is also possible from this wording. Fry in small batches until deep gold and drain on paper. The tomato base is already cooked, so you are mainly setting the crust.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Two cups of reduced tomato plus two cups of crumbs makes something over three cups of mixture, so expect considerably more than a dozen croquettes at a rounded tablespoon or two each. They are soft inside by design and do not hold well once fried.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to teach American cooks what to do with a newly invented hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and its "Calendar of Dinners" set out a year of menus in which the product appeared at nearly every turn. Croquettes were exactly the sort of dish such books favoured: they used up small quantities of food, they dressed plain ingredients in a fried crust, and they gave a demonstration of frying fat that behaved predictably at high heat. Meatless croquettes bound with crumbs appear often enough in American vegetable cookery of the period, and tomato was among the more assertive fillings, its sweetness sharpened here with a pinch of red pepper and a dust of nutmeg in the manner of nineteenth-century tomato sauces.