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Chicken Croquettes

A fried patty of finely chopped chicken and calf’s brains mixed with butter, onion, parsley, flour, stock, lemon, and sherry, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the boiled chicken and calf’s brains very finely.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the minced onion and parsley, then stir in a little flour.

  4. Thin the mixture with beef stock until smooth.

  5. Add pepper, salt, lemon juice, and sherry or port wine.

Shape and fry

  1. Mould the mixture into shapes, dip in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling hot 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + beeftop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,148 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 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

Boiled chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their main body.
Calf’s brains
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the base where the flour is cooked in.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape when moulded.
Egg
Binds the coating so the cracker crumbs adhere before frying.
Cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Thin the mixture with beef stock until smooth. The flour thickens the filling as it is added, so the stock must be stirred in gradually to avoid lumps. A smooth, properly thickened filling is firm enough to mould and hold its shape during frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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