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Southern Chicken Croquettes

A fried chicken croquette with parsley, marjoram, lemon peel, and spices, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Southern Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the flesh from the bones of the cold chicken and mince it finely with the suet and parsley.

  2. Add sweet marjoram, grated lemon peel, pepper, salt, and nutmeg. Mix well.

  3. Pound the mixture to a paste in a marble mortar, adding beaten egg yolk gradually to moisten.

  4. Divide the mixture into equal portions and flour your hands.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape each portion into a pear shape, inserting a clove at the bottom and top for decoration.

  2. Dip each croquette in the beaten egg yolk mixture, then coat with fine bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in lard until golden brown.

  2. Fry some parsley in the lard for garnish, cover a dish with it, and place the croquettes on top.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the main body of the croquettes, giving them their bulk and savory flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender after frying.
Egg yolk
Binds the paste and moistens it, and its beaten coating helps bread crumbs stick.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried in lard.
Lard
Fries the croquettes, transferring heat and adding fat for browning and crispness.

The step that matters

Pound the mixture to a paste while adding egg yolk gradually. Adding the yolk slowly lets the minced chicken and fat absorb it evenly, so the paste holds together when shaped without becoming wet or crumbly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, marjoram, lemon, pepper, egg, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, marjoram, lemon, pepper, egg, flour. 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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