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Macaroni Croquettes

A fried dish of macaroni mixed with cheese and spices, shaped into croquettes.

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 ↓

Macaroni Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil macaroni in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Cut macaroni into very small pieces.

  3. In a saucepan, melt butter and whisk in flour to make a white sauce.

  4. Add milk to the sauce and stir until thickened.

  5. Mix in macaroni, grated cheese, and salt.

  6. Allow the mixture to cool, then shape into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their body once cut small and bound.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce and adds richness and flavour to the filling.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp outer layer.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps bind the filling as it melts into the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. The white sauce must firm up as it cools so the croquettes hold their shape; shaping a warm, soft mixture makes it slump and crack and can cause it to fall apart in the hot 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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