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Italian Beef Croquettes
Chop very finely 3/4 pound of cold roast beef, add 1/2 pound of stale bread-crumbs which have been soaked in enough stock, 1 spoonful of chopped onion, fried in butter, salt, pepper, and parsley. Stir on the fire until smooth, add 2 tablespoonfuls of stewed and strained tomatoes, and the yolk of an egg. When cool, make into croquettes, dip in crumbs, and fry in boiling fat. Serve with mushroom or caper sauce.
CHICKEN CROQUETTES (as made at the Jockey Club, Paris.) For one dozen, cut 3/4 pound boiled chicken very fine, with 1/4 pound or 1/2 can of button mushrooms, 1 tablespoonful of butter, the same of flour, yolks of 2 eggs, and 1 glass of sherry. First, fry an onion in butter, add flour, then a cup of chicken broth, the other things chopped fine, and seasoning. When it boils, add the eggs, and take off to cool. When firm, make into shape and fry. This is a very delicious recipe; the croquettes are soft inside and hard outside, as they should be, if well fried. But the fat must be abundant and boiling.
Two croquette recipes run together here, both built on the same principle: a well-seasoned meat paste bound with egg, chilled hard, crumbed and deep-fried. The measurements are loose in the way period cookbooks often are, and the frying instruction is the part that decides success.
- Chill until genuinely firmBoth mixtures must be spread on a plate and refrigerated until cold and stiff, at least two hours, before shaping. A warm or slack paste will burst in the fat and empty itself into the pan. This is the hinge of the whole dish.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble furiously when the croquette goes in, which is 360-375F. Below that the crust soaks rather than sets, above it the outside colours before the centre warms. Use a thermometer and fry in small batches so the temperature does not crash.
- CrumbingThe beef croquettes say only "dip in crumbs." Croquettes are normally egged before crumbing -- beaten egg, then dry crumbs, with a second coat if the mixture is soft. Bare crumbs on a moist paste will not hold in hot fat.
- "1 spoonful" and "1 glass"Neither is a fixed measure in a book of this date. A spoonful of onion is best read as a tablespoon; a wine glass in period usage runs around 2 fluid ounces, but the amount is genuinely ambiguous, so start with 2 tablespoons of sherry and taste.
- Stale bread-crumbs soaked in stockThis is a panade, and the ratio matters more than the weight. Use dry crumbs from real bread, moisten with just enough hot stock to make a thick paste, and squeeze out any excess before combining, or the mixture will never firm up.
- Adding the yolksIn the chicken recipe the yolks go in "when it boils." Pull the pan off the heat first and beat them in briskly, or they will scramble in the hot sauce and leave grainy threads through the filling.
- Canned button mushroomsThe recipe equates half a can with 1/4 pound, so about 4 oz drained weight is what is meant; rinse them, or use 6 oz of fresh buttons sauteed dry until their liquid has gone.
- YieldThe chicken mixture is stated as a dozen croquettes; the beef, with its half-pound of soaked crumbs added to the meat, makes a larger quantity. Allow three per person as a main course with sauce, two as an entree in the older sense.
- The saucesMushroom or caper sauce is not specified further; either would most likely have been a plain white or brown sauce with the garnish stirred through, though caper sauce of the period was often butter-based. Caper sauce wants the capers rinsed and added off the heat so they keep their bite.
Croquettes were a standard nineteenth-century answer to the cold joint: the name comes from the French croquer, to crunch, and the form exists to turn leftover roast meat into something that can be sent to table as an entree rather than as remains. The page belongs to a familiar type of collection, gathering dishes labelled by nation or by the restaurant where the writer had eaten them; how far the attribution to the Jockey Club in Paris reflects an actual kitchen there cannot be established from the recipe itself. The Italian version is distinguished chiefly by its two spoonfuls of strained tomato. The closing note, that a good croquette is soft inside and hard outside, is the standard the recipe sets for itself.