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Bean Croquettes

Bean croquettes are fried cylinders of mashed beans mixed with breadcrumbs, onion, parsley, butter, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bean Croquettes

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Bean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beans

  1. Boil the brown beans until well done and dry.

  2. Rub the beans through a colander.

Shape the croquettes

  1. Add bread crumbs, onion, parsley, melted butter, salt, and beaten eggs to the beans and mix well.

  2. Form the mixture into cylinders.

  3. Dip each cylinder in egg and then in cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve with a tiny red pepper stuck in the top of each.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Beans + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,376 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Brown beans
Form the main body of the croquette once mashed and mixed with the other ingredients.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and add a coating that helps the croquettes brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body so the mixture holds its shape.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a softer interior texture.

The step that matters

Shaping and coating the cylinders. The mixture is soft and moist, so it can crack or fall apart when dipped and fried. Chilling it briefly and coating evenly with egg and crumbs helps the crust stay intact during frying.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, parsley, butter, egg):

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, parsley, butter, egg. 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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