Croquette

• 1. Introduction

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  Research in 2008 found that the Netherlands eats 350 million kroketten every year. Each one is a crisp breaded roll with a soft, thick filling hidden inside. The Dutch call it a kroket, Spanish speakers say croqueta, and in English it is a croquette. So what exactly is a croquette? Where did the first one come from, and who thought to fry it? And how did a single idea end up in bakeries, snack bars and street stalls across Europe, Asia and the Americas?

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• 2. Anatomy of a Croquette

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  The word croquette is French, taken from croquer, which means 'to crunch'. In the 18th century, English writers usually spelled it croquet. The name describes the point of the dish. A thick binder is combined with a filling, then breaded and deep-fried, so the outside crackles while the inside stays soft. Spanish cuisine is where the dish is most widespread.

  Béchamel is the classic binder, though brown sauce, mashed potatoes, wheat flour and wheat bread can all do the job. The filling is either mixed into the binder or stuffed inside it. Finely chopped meat, seafood, cheese, rice, mushrooms and vegetables are typical, often seasoned with herbs and spices. Sweet croquettes swap in a pastry cream binder and a fruit filling.

  Rolls are the usual shape, yet disks, ovals and balls also appear. The result works as a side dish, a snack or fast food, and it is served worldwide. The earliest recipes that survive come from French kitchens.

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• 3. Recipes From Court Kitchens

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  A recipe from 1691, written by the chef of the French king Louis XIV, is the first known description of the ragout-filled dish. It called for ingredients such as truffles, sweetbreads and cream cheese. The French regarded the result as a delicacy.

  François Massialot left a 17th-century recipe that calls the dish croquets. It binds meat, truffles, marrow, bread crumbs and cheese with egg, then breads the mixture and fries it in lard. Pieces could be as large as an egg or as small as a walnut. Cooks served them as an hors-d'œuvre or as a garnish.

  An English dictionary mentioned the dish in 1706. One 18th-century recipe skipped the thick sauce altogether and used only a batter. The modern type, with a thick binder, is documented in an 1822 English cookbook by the French cook Louis Eustache Ude.

  Originally, cooks filled the dish with leftovers from a roasted chicken or a family broth soup, instead of throwing the scraps away. From the 1800s onward, it also became a way to use leftover stewed meat. Several rice-based recipes appear in the books of Antonin Carême. In France today the base is traditionally thick béchamel, velouté or potato purée, with ham, cheese, meat or vegetables added. In the 18th century, French cooks also brought the dish to Italy, where it would take on a life of its own.

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• 4. Southern European Kitchens

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  In Spain, the traditional croqueta is made with thick béchamel and counts among the most typical tapas. Jamón, chicken and salt cod are the classic fillings. Newer versions are less traditional, and bars and restaurants try apple, wild mushrooms, morcilla (blood sausage), cheeses and tuna. Some even use cuttlefish, whose ink gives colour and flavour. Restaurants that specialize in the dish are called croqueterías.

  Italians call the dish crocchette, and in the south it is known as crocchè. It is made mainly with crushed potatoes or with vegetables such as aubergines, which gives crocchette di melanzane. In Neapolitan, Apulian and Sicilian cooking, mashed potato and egg are covered in breadcrumbs and fried. Crocchette are typically a Southern Italian street food, sold at friggitorie. These fried-food shops are the Italian equivalent of fish and chip shops.

  Rice versions are especially well known in Italy. They include Sicily's arancini, the supplì of Roman cuisine and the Milanese rice and saffron crocchette. In Emilia-Romagna and Piedmont, chicken is the usual filling. In Calabria, polpette di riso are stuffed with rice and cheese, usually Parmesan or pecorino.

  Portuguese croquetes are cylindrical, covered in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. They are usually made with white sauce and beef, sometimes mixed with pork. Cooks often add chouriço, black pepper or piri-piri for flavour. Seafood, fish other than codfish, and potato-based vegetarian versions are also eaten in Portugal, but they go by other names such as rissol, pastel and empada. The name croquete therefore refers only to the Dutch-style beef croquette.

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• 5. Northern and Eastern Tables

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  In Belgium, the two most popular croquettes both have a thick béchamel filling, one mixed with grey shrimps and the other with cheese. They are the garnaalkroketten, or croquettes de crevettes, and the kaaskroketten, or croquettes de fromage. The shrimp filling seems to have first appeared in 1922 and became popular in the 1950s. Belgian croquettes can be a side or a main dish and are usually savoury. As a main dish they arrive with a salad, fried parsley and frites.

  In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Kroketten (singular Krokette) usually means plain potato croquettes. Restaurants serve them as a side dish, and supermarkets sell them frozen.

  Hungary's krokett is a small cylinder, similar to the Czech variety. It is made of potatoes, eggs, flour and butter, seasoned with nutmeg and salt, and deep-fried in oil. Restaurants serve it as a side dish, and shops sell it frozen. A version made with cottage cheese is called túrókrokett.

  In Ireland and the United Kingdom, most supermarkets stock croquettes frozen or refrigerated, and the filling is typically potato. Irish home cooks also make their own, usually adding chopped onion.

  In Poland, croquettes are built from a thin, rolled pancake, much like a crepe. It is stuffed with meat, mushrooms, cabbage, sauerkraut or a combination, then lightly pan-fried. Some recipes also coat the roll in breadcrumbs before frying and serve it with a clear soup such as barszcz, which resembles borscht.

  In Russia, the nearest relative is the widespread minced cutlet, shaped like a meat patty and pan-fried. Beef, pork or a mixture of both, or else chicken, turkey or fish, is combined with bread, eggs, white onions, salt and spices. Bread can make up as much as 25% of the meat, which softens the cutlet and makes it cheaper to produce. The Pozharsky cutlet, a well-known variety, mixes butter into the minced meat.

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• 6. The Dutch Kroket

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  After World War II, several suppliers began mass-producing croquettes filled with beef. The kroket then grew even more popular as fast food, with meat ragout coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried. That success earned it a reputation as a cheap dish of dubious quality. Tongue-in-cheek Dutch urban myths even link its supposedly mysterious filling to offal and butchering waste.

  The 2008 research also estimated that 75% of Dutch people eat them, which works out to 29 kroketten per person per year on average. Only the frikandel is a more popular Dutch snack. The biggest fans are people between 35 and 49 years old.

  The kroket's success spawned look-alikes with other fillings. Noodles, rice and kidney go into the bamibal, the nasibal and the nierbroodje. Kroketten that name the meat include the rundvleeskroket, made with beef, and the kalfsvleeskroket, made with veal. Dutch snack bars also sell the satékroket, which is filled with peanut satay sauce and shredded meat in a ragout, and a goulash kroket. A smaller, round version of the beef or veal kroket is the bitterbal, often served with mustard in bars and at receptions. Most food stores sell frozen potato croquettes and potato balls, which are small and round.

  Broodje kroket puts a croquette on a bread roll, and restaurants, snack shops and street vendors all sell it. The kroket is so popular that McDonald's sells its own version on a bun, called the McKroket.

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• 7. Asian Cousins

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  In India, a potato-filled croquette called aloo tikki, which originated on the Indian subcontinent, is very popular in the north. It is usually served with a stew, eaten as a snack at home and sold by roadside vendors. McDonald's in India serves a fast-food variation of aloo tikki inside a hamburger bun. In West Bengal, two popular types are the chop and the cutlet. A vegetable chop uses a medley of mashed boiled beetroot, carrot and green peas, held together by potato, then breaded and deep-fried. A cutlet is like a chop without the potato binding, and a mutton cutlet is made of minced goat meat mixed with spices. Meat croquettes called kebabs are made with minced mutton. Lightly spiced beef croquettes are a popular snack and appetiser among the Christian communities of Goa and Kerala.

  Sri Lanka has two main types. The first is called a roll or Chinese roll, a cylindrical bakery product similar to a spring roll or egg roll. Most are filled with fish, potatoes and spices, so they are called fish rolls, though chicken is sometimes used. The second type is the cutlet, which is spherical, generally made for festive occasions and similar to the Portuguese-style bolinho.

  In China, Japanese-style potato croquettes are popular. They are made with mashed potatoes, corn and sometimes meat.

  Indonesia's kroket arrived during Dutch colonial rule and is now one of the country's most popular snacks. Cooks put a chicken or ragout filling inside a ball of mashed potato, then bread and fry it.

  In Japan, the relative of the croquette is the korokke, widely available in supermarkets, convenience stores and butcher shops, as well as at specialty korokke shops. The dish was likely imported in the late 1800s, along with other Western dishes. Most korokke are patty-shaped and made mainly of potatoes, with onions, carrots and usually less than 5% meat, such as pork or beef. They are often served with tonkatsu sauce. Cylindrical korokke more closely resemble the French version. Seafood such as prawns or crab meat, or chicken in white sauce, is cooled to solidify before breading and frying, so the interior melts when the croquette is served hot. This type is called cream korokke, and it is often served with no sauce or with tomato sauce. Croquettes made mainly of meat are not called korokke in Japan but menchi katsu, short for minced meat cutlets. The town of Assabu, Hokkaido, holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest croquette.

  In South Korea, the goroke, also written keuroket, is sold in many bakeries. The most common type is a deep-fried roll stuffed with japchae ingredients, or with chicken curry and mashed potato plus vegetable salad. Some are filled with kimchi, pork or bulgogi ingredients. Many Korean stores advertise the goroke as a French product, and most European-style bread stores sell it.

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• 8. Across the Americas

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  In Puerto Rico, croquettes are typically made from ham, codfish or chicken and dipped in a sauce called "mayo-ketchup", a variation of fry sauce. Supermarkets sell them frozen. Other versions use taro, cornmeal (called sorullos), breadfruit, yams or cassava in place of wheat flour or potato.

  Cuban croquettes are nearly identical, also made from ham or chicken. A common variation adds cheese, potato and ham, and some are made with fish. Dominican croquettes are close to both, typically made from ham or chicken, with a common cheese and potato variation, a beef variation and some fish versions. On Aruba, croquettes are commonly made with mashed potato, ground beef, shellfish and fish. People eat them as an early morning breakfast or as a snack at any time of day, and they are considered one of the island's cultural foods.

  In Mexico, croquettes are usually made of tuna or chicken and potatoes. In southern Mexico, one variety is made with fresh cheese, plantain and black beans.

  In Tampa, Florida, the deviled crab, or croqueta de jaiba, is a local variety made from blue crab. The crab meat is seasoned with a Cuban-style sauce locally called chilau, rolled in crumbs from stale Cuban bread and shaped roughly like a prolate spheroid. It is meant to be eaten with one hand. It originated in the immigrant community of Ybor City during a cigar workers' strike in the 1920s and is still popular there.

  Brazil's croquetes are primarily made from beef and are a common snack in many parts of the country. The coxinha is a popular chicken-based croquette. In Ecuador, llapingachos from Riobamba are potato cakes with a cheese filling, fried in oil with achiote and served with a peanut sauce.

  Uruguayans call them croquetas, and the most popular stuffings are mashed potatoes, ham and mozzarella, and rice. The rice ones sometimes include herbs and little cubes of ham. Most are cylindrical and medium-sized, though larger spherical ones also appear, especially with rice stuffing. Bakeries, supermarkets and food shops sell them, and many people cook them at home as a side dish or even a main dish. In modern restaurants, more sophisticated croquettes filled with serrano ham and a mixture of cheeses, or with salmon, come with an elaborate dip such as sweet chili sauce and are ordered as starters.

  In Colombia, croquettes are a common party snack because they are easy to pick up and carry while dancing salsa or merengue. Cooks grind cooked meat, usually chicken, with egg, breadcrumbs, broth and a sofrito mix. The mixture is lightly battered and deep-fried. Bars, casual restaurants and family celebrations serve them with a side of homemade or bottled chili sauce.

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