A favor to ask of all my FRiends here before I start doing google searches: I trust you all more than strangers...
I was hoping for something that I haven’t had for DECADES, a dish a dear departed Aunt used to make every week...
Salmon Croquets.
I found a restaurant that has them, and they were awful! I remember my Aunt using canned salmon for the recipe, and I’ve got a can, but would REALLY appreciate any suggestions.
This is old time comfort food to me.
Thanks!
Mark
Sorry Mark, I don’t have the recipe you seek, but I recall those Salmon Croquettes well from the fifties, and the sixties as they too were one of my favorites. I believe they must have come from a publication that was popular at the time such as Good Housekeeping, or the likes of that. Many delicious memories were started by those magazines way back then.
I would look for the recipe in an old Betty Crocker cookbook search online, and since you brought up those Croquettes, that’s precisely where I’m going next. I want to relive those days with that recipe myself.
If I find it, I’ll get the link for you.
WE looked, and looked throughout our extensive collection of cookbooks from Betty Crocker, to Joy of Cooking, to California Cooking Academy A-Z, and online, but did not find what we would believe to be that recipe from that particular era that we remember was so good.
WE, that’s Mrs. RQSR, and myself believe the ingredients of that era would have been minced onions, perhaps minced celery, crushed Saltines as they were a biggee back then in so many recipes, egg(s) slightly beaten, salt, and pepper, perhaps some lemon juice, but will take some experimentation to come up with the proper amounts of the individual ingredients. We believe the croquettes were sauteed in a skillet on top of the stove in those days, and finished off in the oven.
We found Salmon Croquettes of all sorts, but none of them were very exciting, or seemed to be the sort of recipe we would have had sixty years ago as interest in cooking was really just taking off about then.
Kraft Foods, General Mills with their Betty Crocker Brand, Campbell Soup Company, Kelloggs, and other big name producers of food products were instrumental in experimentation to create recipes promoting their product lines. Those recipes would be published in every Home Making Magazine of the era, so which one is anybody’s guess.
I’ve got some old Good Housekeeping’s booklets from the 50’s
Here’s some Salmon recipes from them:
(from 500 delicious dishes from leafovers - 1952)
Fish Cakes
1 cup flaked cooked fish
1 tea minced onion
1 tea lemon juice
pepper
1 egg slightly beaten
1 cup cold mashed potatoes
2 T flour
1/4 cup fat
Combine fish, onion, lemon juice, seasonings, egg and potatoes. Form into cakes, coat with flour and saute in hot fat. serves 4
(from 250 different fish and seafood recipes - 1953)
Savory Salmon Loaf
1/2 cuop buttered bread crumbs
2 eggs slightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 (1 lb) can salmon, flaked
1 tea lemon juice
1/2 tea salt
dash pepper
1/2 tea sage
2 tea finely chopped onion
1 T chopped parsley
1 T melted butter
Combine ingredients in order given. Pack firmly into buttered loaf pan and bake in moderate oven (350’)30-40 minutes. Turn out onto platter and garnish with sliced hard-cooked eggs and sliced pickles. Serves 6
There’s a bunch more Salmon recipes - fish rolls-salmon custard-salmon in rice nest-salmon rarebit-salmon rice loaf-salmon souffle-fish puffs-fish mold piquante, etc.
If any of those sound good to you guys- I’ll post them.
I have 11 of these booklets - covering the food chain - if anyone is looking for something from the 50’s I may have it. They range from 1952-58
Croquettes, in my research here, looks to be either done with mashed potatoes or a heavy white sauce as the binder. Do you remember if she used any of those ingredients? I've got some '50's recipes using other meats that you could swap out maybe.
In Paper-bag Cookery (1911), for Salmon Croquettes, it suggests to mix in a tablespoon of chopped cucumber (English tin of salmon was at the time. No idea if it's an English cuke.).
I make salmon croquettes, except now I do them in little three sided pyramid shapes.They look more fancy setting on the plate..plus, it’s easier to fry them, and not have them roll..
Anyway, it’s one big can salmon (I pick out the skin), or one little can of boneless skinless salmon, 1/2 tsp minced dill, 2 tsp lemon juice, dash pepper, about 2 tsp finely minced onion, about 2 tsp, finely diced celery. an egg, and about a half stack/pack of saltines crushed..If you use mashed potatoes..I’d only use a fourth of a stack of the crushed saltines..
After you moosh it all together, pat it down in the bowl, divide cut into eight sections..each one will be one croquette.
I do the little three sided tipi, or pyramid shape, then set them in the fridge for about 20 minutes, uncovered, so they firm up.
Then, I fry them in a sautee pan with about an inch of oil..I start out with them setting on their “base”, then just tip them over after they’re a light golden brown..
If I have smoked salmon I need to use, I omit the dill from the recipe.
Hope that helps, but I will look in my old 1910 to 1970’s cookbooks, and see if I can find exactly what you’re looking for.