Home › Sandwiches › Hominy Croquettes
Hominy Croquettes
Hominy croquettes may be served for almost any meal, and are delicious as a breakfast dish, with maple syrup. To make them, mix one cupful of cold boiled hominy, one beaten egg, one tablespoonful of melted butter, a teaspoonful of sugar, and a saltspoonful of salt. Stir until it is smooth, then form into cylinder or ball shapes, flouring the hands well during the operation. Then roll in flour and set them in a cold place for some hours. Fry in deep fat and drain in a hot colander.
A simple bound-and-fried croquette that depends almost entirely on one thing: the mixture must be cold and stiff before it meets the fat. The original gives no temperature, no yield and no frying time, so the notes below fill those gaps.
- The hinge: chill it properly"Set them in a cold place for some hours" is not optional resting time — it is what keeps the croquettes from disintegrating in the fat. Two hours in the refrigerator, uncovered on a floured tray, is the minimum; overnight is better.
- What hominy means hereCooked whole or coarsely broken hulled corn — the sort sold canned as hominy, or cooked from dried. Cold hominy grits, cooked thick and set firm, behave the same way and are the easier modern substitute. If using canned whole hominy, drain and chop or mash it so the mixture will hold together.
- A saltspoonfulA quarter teaspoon, by the usual reckoning of the period.
- Deep fat temperature365–375°F. Below that the croquettes soak; above it the outside colors before the inside heats through. Two to three minutes, turning once, until deep gold.
- Fry in batchesCrowding the pan drops the oil temperature sharply, which can leave croquettes greasy and poorly set. Four or five at a time in a deep pan, letting the fat recover between batches.
- "Drain in a hot colander"A colander warmed in the oven, so the croquettes do not steam themselves soft against cold metal. A wire rack set over a sheet pan in a low oven does the same job and holds them for serving.
- YieldOne cup of hominy makes roughly eight small croquettes — two or three servings as a breakfast dish. Scale up freely; the proportions hold.
- A firmer crust, if wantedThe recipe rolls in flour only. Flour, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs gives a sturdier shell and is the standard treatment for croquettes of this era, though it changes the texture from soft to crisp.
Hominy — hulled corn, often made by treating the kernels with an alkaline solution to loosen the hull, a technique taken from Indigenous cooks of the Americas, though hominy was also produced by mechanical hulling — was cheap, filling and everywhere in nineteenth-century American kitchens, which meant every household book needed something to do with the leftovers. Croquettes were the standard answer: bind cold cooked starch with egg, shape, chill, fry. The same formula appears in these books applied to rice, potato, semolina and mush of every description. Serving them with maple syrup at breakfast places this firmly in the northern American sweet-savory tradition that also produced fried cornmeal mush and scrapple with syrup. Its appearance under "Sandwiches" reflects how loosely the chapters of late-Victorian household compendia were organized rather than any relation to bread.