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Tomato Croquettes
Stew together for twenty minutes, one-half of a can of tomatoes, one tablespoonful of chopped onions, one sprig of parsley, one-half of a bay leaf, four cloves and sufficient salt and pepper to give a very high seasoning. Rub through a sieve. In a clean saucepan melt together two tablespoonfuls of butter and five tablespoonfuls of flour. Add two cupfuls of the strained tomatoes and stir and cook for ten minutes. Take from the fire and set aside until cold. Flour the hands and carefully mold into small croquettes. Dip each into slightly beaten egg and roll in fine bread crumbs. Let stand for twenty minutes, then repeat the dipping and rolling in crumbs. Fry at once in a kettle of hot fat and drain on unglazed paper.
A vegetarian croquette built on a stiff tomato panada rather than a meat filling. Everything depends on the paste setting up firm enough to handle, so the two long waits — cooling and the rest between breadings — are the working parts of the recipe.
- Half a can of tomatoesCanned tomatoes of the period were commonly sold in cans holding roughly a quart, so half is about 2 cups with their juice. Stewing and sieving will cost you some volume, so you may need a little more tomato to reach the 2 cupfuls the second stage calls for.
- The roux is meant to look wrongFive tablespoons of flour to two of butter is far past a normal roux. That excess flour is structural — it makes a paste stiff enough to mold. Cook the butter and flour together a minute or two before the tomato goes in to take off the raw taste, and expect the mixture to pull away from the pan in a mass.
- Cold means cold"Set aside until cold" means thoroughly cold and firm; chilling in the refrigerator for an hour or more, or overnight, is the simplest way to get there. Warm paste will not hold a shape and will burst in the fat.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe says only "a kettle of hot fat"; around 375F suits croquettes. Cooler and the crumb coat drinks fat before it sets; hotter and the shell colors before the inside is hot. Fry in small batches so the temperature holds.
- Why breaded twiceThe twenty-minute rest between the first and second coating lets the egg set into the crumbs, and the double shell is what keeps a soft, saucy interior from blowing out. Do not skip the second pass.
- Unglazed paperBrown paper or newsprint at the time; paper towels or a wire rack over a sheet pan now. A rack keeps the underside crisp.
- SeasoningThe instruction for "very high seasoning" is deliberate — flour and frying flatten flavor. Season the purée until it tastes slightly too aggressive on its own.
- Yield and servingTwo cupfuls of thickened purée makes roughly 12 small croquettes, enough for four as a side or a light lunch. They are good hot with a plain cream sauce or a spoon of the reserved tomato.
Croquettes were one of the defining forms of American genteel cookery around 1900 — a way of turning a small quantity of something flavorful into a neat, uniform, fried shape suitable for a luncheon plate. The technique is French in origin, and the binder here is a thick, roux-based paste, related to the panada — the bread- or flour-based binder used to hold quenelles and forcemeats together — though not quite the same thing. What is notable is that this version contains no meat at all: the canned tomato does the work. Commercially canned tomatoes were cheap and widely available by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and cookbooks of this period lean on them heavily for out-of-season flavor. The seasoning — onion, parsley, bay, clove — is the standard aromatic set that turn-of-the-century American books inherited from French sauce practice.