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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are fried patties made from boiled chicken, mashed potatoes, eggs, mustard, herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil and chop the chicken very fine.

  2. Moisten the chicken with the boiling liquid to form a thick pulp.

  3. Mix in the mashed potatoes until creamy.

  4. Add the eggs, mustard, marjoram, salt, pepper, and chopped celery.

  5. Soften the mixture with milk until very soft, then add the butter.

Shape and coat

  1. Mould the mixture into shapes.

  2. Dip each shape in beaten egg and then in cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling lard 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.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Marjoram + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together615 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + marjoramtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and gives them their main body and flavour.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starch and softness, helping the mixture hold together and stay creamy.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the shapes hold their form during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender interior and flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mixture softens into a shapeable consistency.

The step that matters

Soften the mixture with milk until very soft, then add the butter.. The mixture must be moist enough to mould but firm enough to hold its shape. Too little liquid makes it crumbly, while too much makes the shapes slump and burst during frying.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, potato, egg, marjoram, pepper, celery, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, potato, egg, marjoram, pepper, celery, milk. 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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