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Chicken and Sweetbread Croquettes

A fried croquette made with cooked sweetbread and chicken, bound with butter, flour, stock, cream, and egg, then coated and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 and Sweetbread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine the chopped sweetbread and chicken in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and cook until frothy.

  3. Gradually stir in the chicken stock, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the cream, salt, and pepper, then mix in the beaten egg and chopped meat.

Shape and coat

  1. Let the mixture cool, then shape into croquettes.

  2. Coat each croquette in egg and bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in deep oil until golden brown, then drain on paper towels.

  2. Serve with mushroom 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

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

Sweetbread
Provides the main meaty texture and rich flavour of the filling.
Chicken
Adds bulk and savoury flavour, along with the sweetbread, to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base of the flour thickener.
Flour
Cooked in butter, it thickens the stock into a paste that holds the filling together.
Chicken stock
Supplies moisture and savoury flavour, thickened by the butter and flour mixture.
Egg
Binds the filling and, in the coating, sets to form a crisp shell around each croquette.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. The starch-thickened filling is too soft while hot. As it cools it firms up and holds its shape, so shaping it early can cause the croquettes to break or slump in the oil.

“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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