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Beef Croquettes

Beef croquettes are small, breaded beef patties served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Mince the cooked beef until you have 1 pint.

  2. Season the beef with salt, pepper, grated onion, and lemon juice.

Make the binding mixture

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the beef broth, stirring until smooth.

  3. Add the seasoned beef to the mixture and boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg thoroughly and pour the mixture onto a plate to cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into croquettes, dip in egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes until golden brown and serve with tomato 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean cooked beef
Provides the main filling and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a smooth mixture that holds the beef together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps form the initial roux with the flour.
Beef broth
Adds moisture and beefy flavour to the binding mixture.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture and, as a coating, helps bread crumbs stick and brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape and will slump or crack when dipped and coated. Cooling lets the starch-thickened binder firm up so the croquettes keep their form through frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, lemon, butter, flour, egg, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, lemon, butter, flour, 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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