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Meat Croquettes

Meat croquettes are fried balls of minced meat mixed with soaked bread, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Meat Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread in water and squeeze it dry.

  2. Mix the soaked bread with the minced meat, parsley, ginger, eggs, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Roll the mixture into egg-shaped balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat each ball in flour, then dip in beaten eggs.

  2. Fry the coated balls in boiling drippings until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Parsley + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds moisture and softness to the meat mixture.
Minced meat
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set during frying to hold the shape.
Flour
Creates a dry surface that helps the beaten egg coating adhere and brown.

The step that matters

Frying the coated balls in boiling drippings. The fat must be hot enough to brown the egg and flour coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and the centre may not set before the outside overbrowns.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, meat, veal, parsley, ginger, egg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, veal, parsley, ginger, egg, pepper. 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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