Croquette or Burger? Neither.
I made the kids my mother’s recipe for salmon croquettes yesterday afternoon. Well, I thought I was making it for the kids. Turns out, only one likes them, but it was apparently enough for my mother to shlep two cans (that’s right, cans) of salmon from the States. While I was making them, I said to myself, “Why am I calling them croquettes? These are salmon burgers.” But then, they lacked the meatiness and density of a burger, which led me to a much longer mental discourse on why I would call a burger a burger and why I would call a croquette a croquette? And which was right?
So what’s the difference? I’m not entirely sure. Why am I even thinking about this?
A croquette is a patty of chopped protein, bound with eggs and maybe flour or breadcrumbs, seasoned and pan-fried.
A burger is a patty of chopped protein, bound with eggs and maybe flour or breadcrumbs, seasoned and grilled. Or pan-fried.
Come to think of it, a crab cake is a patty of chopped protein, bound with eggs and maybe flour or breadcrumbs, seasoned and pan-fried.
I know, I know. “Who cares?” Well, it’s not the snobbery of calling it some fancy French name, I just want to be accurate. Accuracy matters in cooking: teaspoon vs. tablespoon, et cetera. And, it’s something that I wasn’t sure of, so it became an educational quest as well. Surely a minor footpath on the great road of culinary adventure, but something to explore nonetheless.
In the annals of culinary writing, a croquette was made from chicken, potatoes, or as a dessert dish. The savory dishes were coated with bread crumbs and deep-fried. Larousse’s Gastronomique contains recipes for basic croquettes, beef croquettes, cheese, Viennese, mussel, potato, rice, celery root and three sweet croquettes: apricot, chestnut and rice. Interestingly, a beef croquette doesn’t exactly resemble a hamburger. A more modern definition is “a small cake of minced food, such as poultry, vegetables, or fish, that is usually coated with bread crumbs and fried in deep fat.[1]”
This last step was decidedly missing from my family’s recipe; the bread crumbs were only always used as a filler/binder mixed in along with the eggs and seasoning. This alone seems to be sufficient cause to stop referring to it a croquette. But was it a burger then, or something else?
The truth is it lacked the chunky texture of minced beef to be labeled ‘burger.’ It was too smooth and creamy which may have been a result of using cooked canned salmon. That, and it was fried in oil, which properly formed burgers should never need if you’re searing them on a griddle. (Why aren’t you grilling them?) Oh and I didn’t serve it on a bun, which I suppose is de rigueur. I figured that using chopped raw belly salmon may qualify it more as a burger than a croquette, but that will have to wait for another post.
So was it a salmon cake? Crab cake has the alliteration thing going for it, and it’s a well-known fish/seafood preparation, so I guess they are my dish’s closest culinary relation, but even so crab meat in crab cakes is very firm and roughly chopped, which my canned mush wasn’t.
I guess in the end while it most closely resembled a croquette it lacked the egg and breading exterior. To correctly call it a croquette means it needs to be breaded and fried. To call it a burger it would definitely need to be fresh ground salmon, and to call it a cake would need rough chopped salmon.
My kid ate Beignets Mousseline de Saumon, Mousse di salmone Frittelle or Salmon Mousse Fritters.
Sorry, Mom.
Tags: bread crumbs, burger, cake, celery root, crab, croquette, dessert dish, flour, french name, pan fried, patty, poultry vegetables, protein, salmon, salmon burgers, Salmon Mousse, savory dishes, shlep, something
