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Macaroni and Spaghetti Croquettes

A fried croquette made from cooked macaroni or spaghetti mixed with cheese, paprika, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Macaroni and Spaghetti Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pasta

  1. Break the macaroni or spaghetti into small pieces and plunge into boiling salted water.

  2. Cook until tender, then drain and cool.

  3. Cut the cooked pasta into small rings.

Make and coat the croquettes

  1. In a bowl, mix the pasta with cheese, paprika, and just enough heavy white sauce to hold it together.

  2. When cool, mold the mixture into croquettes.

  3. Dip each croquette in bread crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry until golden brown and serve with your choice of sauce.

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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni or spaghetti
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it a firm, chewy body.
Heavy white sauce
Binds the pasta and cheese together so the mixture holds its shape.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and some richness to the filling.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the crumbs stick and help them set during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust through browning when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before molding. Warm starch-based filling is soft and sticky, so shaping it too early makes croquettes that slump or break apart. Cooling lets the white sauce set and firm the mixture enough to hold its shape.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, sauce, bread, egg):

  1. Mustardfits about as well
  2. Tomatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, sauce, bread, 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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