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Croquettes of Cold Chicken

Croquettes of cold chicken are oblong rolls of minced chicken, suet, spices, and parsley, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Croquettes of Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the cold chicken very fine with a little suet.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Pound part of the mixture in a marble mortar to a paste, adding a tablespoon of well-beaten egg occasionally.

  4. Continue pounding more chicken in the same manner until all is done.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into oblong rolls.

  2. Dip the rolls into beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold chicken
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and gives them their main flavour.
Well-beaten egg
Binds the minced chicken into a paste and helps the coating adhere.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender.

The step that matters

Pound the chicken to a smooth paste with the egg. If the chicken is not minced fine and pounded smooth, the mixture will not hold together when shaped and may crack or fall apart in the hot oil. Adding the egg gradually lets it bind evenly without becoming loose.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, parsley, egg, bread. 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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