Pommes de Terre à la Saint-Florentin

Pommes de Terre à la Saint-Florentin (potato-and-ham croquettes in a vermicelli crust) teach one true thing: a croquette succeeds through contrast. The centre must remain soft and buttery while the outside becomes crisp, and here that outside is dry vermicelli, not breadcrumbs. The vermicelli crust is not decoration. It is the dish.

The brigade formula assumed Potato Croquettes (No. 219) paste waiting cold in the larder, cooks shaping whole trays, and a deep kettle of frying fat held ready for service. At home, one pound of paste, a heavy pot, and a thermometer do the same work. Only the quantity and vessel have changed because one table doesn't need a service tray or a vat of fat; the ratio of two ounces of lean ham per pound of paste, the egg coating, the vermicelli, and the very hot fry remain exactly where the canon put them. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Bulk production was brigade scaffolding, so it can go. Cold paste, the coating, and the flattening after coating must stay. The one step that decides the Saint-Florentin croquettes is the frying temperature: let the fat reach its full heat and return there between batches, or the crust drinks fat before it can set.