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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are small fried balls of chicken, onion, and broth mixture coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the chopped onion in butter until soft.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for half a minute.

  3. Add the chopped chicken, broth, salt, pepper, and nutmeg; stir for 2 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks.

  5. Return to heat and stir for 1 minute, then add mushrooms or truffles.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their main body and flavour.
Butter
Enriches the onion and adds richness and flavour to the base of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a stiff base that holds the mixture together when shaped.
Egg yolks
Set during gentle heating to bind the filling and add richness and structure.
Broth
Moistens the flour and chicken, forming a savoury sauce that binds the filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks. Yolks thicken when heated, so adding them off the heat and then gently returning the pan to heat keeps the mixture smooth and prevents scrambling. Too much heat at this point can curdle the yolks and make the filling grainy, and the mixture must be firm enough to shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, egg, mushroom):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, egg, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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