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Chicken Croquettes

A fried chicken croquette made with boiled chicken, milk, butter, flour, and spices, coated in beaten egg and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour smooth in a little of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a saucepan over boiling water until scalded.

  3. Pour in the flour mixture and stir until thick like cream.

  4. Sprinkle the salt and cayenne pepper over the butter and mix it into the milk mixture.

  5. Combine this mixture thoroughly with the chopped chicken and let it cool until stiff.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into 12 croquettes, each 3 to 4 inches long, ensuring a smooth surface.

  2. Roll each croquette in the beaten egg, then coat with grated bread.

  3. Fry in deep lard 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled chicken
Provides the main body and bulk of the croquette filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff base that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the creamy, moist sauce that binds the chicken into a smooth mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, more tender texture.
Beaten egg
Forms a coating that helps the grated bread stick to the croquettes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until stiff before shaping. A warm, loose mixture cannot hold its shape and may split or stick when shaped. Chilling it firm lets the starch-thickened base set, so the croquettes keep their form and stay intact while frying.

“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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