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Rice and Apricot Croquettes
(France.) Drain 4 large apricots, preserved or canned or freshly cooked with sugar, halve them and remove the stones. Fill the centres with rice, boiled with milk and sugar until thick and flavored with vanilla. Put two halves together, dip each whole in more rice, then in chopped almonds and yolk of egg, and fry in boiling fat. Arrange on a plate, with a good sauce or melted jam or custard. Dust the balls with powdered sugar.
A simple French entremets that depends almost entirely on two things: rice thick enough to hold its shape, and fruit dry enough to be coated. Neither is spelled out in the original.
- Chill before fryingThis is the hinge. Warm rice slumps off the apricot and disintegrates in the fat. Build the balls, then refrigerate them at least an hour — until firm to the touch — before they go anywhere near the pan.
- The riceA short-grain rice (Arborio, Carolina, pudding rice) simmered in milk with sugar and vanilla until it is stiff enough to stand a spoon in — closer to a thick paste than to a loose pudding. Roughly 1/2 cup rice to 2 cups milk, cooked down slowly. An egg yolk beaten into the hot rice off the heat helps it set as it cools.
- Coating orderThe original lists "chopped almonds and yolk of egg" together, so it is unclear whether one mixture or a sequence was intended; read as a sequence it leaves the egg on the outside. In practice the yolk is the glue: roll in rice, brush or dip in beaten yolk, then press into finely chopped almonds. Two rounds of yolk and almonds gives a sturdier shell.
- "Boiling fat"Deep fat, somewhere around 350-375F. Much hotter and the almonds scorch before the interior warms; cooler and the coating drinks oil. Two to three minutes, turning, until evenly gold. Fry only a few at a time so the temperature holds.
- Drain the fruit properlyCanned or preserved apricots carry a great deal of syrup, and the recipe's first word is "Drain". Halve them, blot the cut faces on paper, and leave them on a rack for twenty minutes; wet fruit is a likely reason for the coating splitting in the fat.
- Yield and servingFour croquettes — a dessert for two, or four with a substantial sauce. Serve hot, with thin custard, apricot jam let down with a spoonful of water and warmed, or a fruit purée, and dust with confectioners' sugar at the table so it does not dissolve.
- AlmondsBlanched sweet almonds chopped fine, not ground; meal gives a pasty crust rather than a crisp one. Toasting them first is not called for and will over-brown in the fryer.
Croquettes of sweetened rice belong to the standard French repertoire of nineteenth-century entremets, where boiled rice — cheap, bland, and endlessly mouldable — was pressed into borders, moulded puddings, and fried balls with equal readiness. The name comes from croquer, to crunch, and refers to the coating rather than to any particular filling. Stuffing the rice around a preserved apricot is close to the abricots à la Condé family, in which the fruit is set on or in a bed of vanilla rice; frying the assembly is what turns a spooned dessert into something that can be handed round on a plate. The book labels the dish by country — here simply (France.).