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Potato Croquettes En Surprise

A French dish of potato croquettes filled with creamed chicken, shrimp, or peas, then breaded and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Potato Croquettes En Surprise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the potato croquette mixture, omitting parsley.

  2. Shape the mixture into small nests.

  3. Fill each nest with creamed chicken, shrimp, or peas.

  4. Cover the nests with more croquette mixture.

  5. Roll the filled nests into the shape of croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in breadcrumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in deep oil until golden brown.

  3. Drain on brown paper before serving.

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. Potato + chickentop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,991 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato croquette mixture
Forms the soft potato shell that holds the filling and crisps on the outside when fried.
Creamed chicken or shrimps or peas
Provides the moist, rich filling at the centre of each croquette.
Breadcrumbs
Form the crunchy, golden outer crust during frying.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres evenly to the croquette.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes in deep oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to crisp and brown the breadcrumb coating quickly. If the oil is too cool, the croquettes absorb grease and may leak or fall apart before the crust sets, while the filling needs to be heated through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, 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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