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Peanut Croquettes

A fried snack made from milk, bread crumbs, nuts, sherry, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Peanut Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Cook the milk and bread crumbs in a saucepan over medium heat until smooth.

  2. Add the finely chopped nuts, sherry, and beaten egg yolks; cook for one more minute.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with hot maple syrup.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nuts + maple syruptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Softens the bread crumbs into a smooth, cohesive base for the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the mixture so it holds its shape and forms a crisp coating.
Finely chopped nuts
Add body and the main peanut flavour to the croquette filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping it set when cooked.

The step that matters

Cooling before shaping. The mixture must be cool and firm enough to hold its shape. If shaped while warm, it stays soft and sticky, and the croquettes can slump or break apart in the hot oil.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, sherry, egg, maple syrup):

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, sherry, egg, maple syrup. 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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