Where does Croquettes de morue come from?
The croquette is a piece of dough mixed with crumbled cod and covered with egg and grated
bread and fried.
The name comes from the word ‘Croquer’ that, in French means crunch and with the
derivation of the word, it diminutive is ‘Croquette’. This word even crossed the ‘Pirineos’ and
arrived to Spain, also arrived to The Netherlands and Germany, where became too a
traditional recipe with their own variants. For example, in Germany they use to do them with
potatoes.
There have been a great number of famous writers that talked in their books about this dish.
We can highlight Cristian-Millau, founder of the guide Gault-Millau, or Alejandro Dumas in his
‘Cooking Dictionary’.
What is the origin of Croquettes de morue?
His inventor was the great chef Carème who, in 1817, served a banquet with ‘Croquettes a la Royal’ in the menu, they were called like that because of the people invited to the banquet.
In 1834, it is published ‘The Royal Parisian Pastrycook’ in England, based in the work of this
French chef, with plenty of variants for the preparation of the croquettes, and with the
peculiarity that most of them were sweet.
Ingredients:
2 L of milk.
250 g of butter.
240 g of flour.
Extra virgin Olive Oil.
350 g of unsalted cod.
Flour.
2 eggs
Grated brad.
Salt.
Time of preparation: 1 hour.
How to cook Croquettes de morue:
First step: Ingredients preparation.
Take a plate and put the butter on it, add some olive oil and start melting the butter with the
aid of a fork and preserve.
Take a pot and warm some milk until it boils, cover the pot and preserve until we need it.
Take the cod and crumble it. If you can’t find an unsalted cod, you should remove the salt
before crumbling. For that you should put the cod in water the night before and change 3 or four times the water after 1 hour or 2, when you change the water for the 3 rd or the 4 th time leave the cod inside it for 8 hours and wash it with water afterwards, then you can crumble it.
Put some flavour in one plate and preserve, put some grated bread in a plate and preserve and put the eggs in a plate, stir and preserve.
Top Tip: there is not going to be too much time until we use the milk but cover it in order to
preserve the heat.
Second step: Prepare the béchamel.
We already have another recipe about béchamel but, to avoid you the effort of going to the
other recipe, we are going to explain here (less detailed) how to prepare the béchamel for the croquettes.
Take a pot, and put the butter you melted before inside. Once the butter is hot, spread the
flavour inside the pot and start stirring, when you have small yellow balls of butter and flour
inside your pot, put the fire into low heat and start adding the warmed milk inside the pot,
never stop stirring to avoid the lumps.
Once you have added all the milk and you have your béchamel ready, add the crumbled cod
and move everything very well, let the cod to cook inside the béchamel, so it can take the taste and turn the heat off. Put the béchamel inside a tray and let it low the temperature before you do the next steps.
Top Tip: add the milk little by little and don’t add the next stream of milk until the one you
added before is completely mixed with the butter and the flour.
Top Tip: cover the tray with the béchamel with transparent film to avoid the creation of a
crust.
Third step: prepare the croquettes.
Spread some flour in a surface to put on it the croquettes and avoid them to get stuck and break before frying.
When the béchamel has rest enough and is cold, start taking small pieces of it and give to
these pieces a rounded shape, now put each of this pieces in the plate of flour, scroll it until
you have the whole surface covered, now do the same process but with the egg and finally
with the grated bread, always in this order.
Top Tip: shake a little the croquettes after scrolling them on the flour and the grated bread in
order to remove the excessive amount before the next step.
Final Step.
Take a pan and put olive oil inside, you should put enough oil to cover half of the croquettes
when you put them inside. Put the fire in high heat and wait until the oil is very hot, when this
happen, is time to start frying the croquettes. For this put the croquettes in the oil and wait
until they have a golden colour, turn them over and wait until the other side has the same
colour, remove them from the pan and remove the extra oil. The croquettes are ready to eat!!
Yummy!!
Top Tip: don’t fry many croquettes at the same time or they will break, put only 3 or 4 in a big pan and separated, it will take more time but the consistence and texture will be perfect this way.
