Skip to main content
Main

Meat Croquettes

A fried patty of finely chopped roast beef or veal mixed with boiled rice, gravy, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Meat Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the cold roast beef or veal finely.

  2. Mix in an equal amount of boiled rice.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the gravy from the roast and add 1 egg.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and sage to taste.

Shape and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in butter 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.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef or veal
Provides the main meat flavour and body of the croquettes.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and a soft texture that lightens the meat mixture.
Gravy from roast
Moistens the mixture and adds savoury flavour.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Fries the cakes, adding richness and browning the outside.

The step that matters

Moistening and binding the mixture. Too little gravy leaves the mixture dry and crumbly, while too much makes it soft and hard to shape. The egg helps the cakes hold together, so the mixture should be firm enough to mold before frying.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, rice, meat, egg, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, meat, egg, pepper, butter. 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.

More meat croquettes recipes

Cold 9Australian 3 See all 60 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes