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Spinach Croquettes

Spinach croquettes are fried balls of spinach, butter, herbs, milk, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Spinach Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spinach base

  1. In a porcelain saucepan, combine spinach, butter, marjoram, parsley, salt, pepper, lemon zest, and sugar.

  2. Add milk and cook over low heat until absorbed.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cooled, mix in the beaten eggs thoroughly.

  2. Dust your hands with flour and shape the mixture into croquettes.

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

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling oil until golden brown.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then serve.

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. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the bulk and green flavour of the croquette filling.
Milk
Cooked down into the spinach, it adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the cooled mixture so the croquettes hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth texture.
Egg white
Gives the bread crumb coating something to adhere to, helping it stay on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form the crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Beaten eggs added to a hot mixture can scramble and thin the filling. Cooling first lets the eggs blend evenly and bind the croquettes so they hold their shape when shaped and fried.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, marjoram, parsley, pepper, lemon, sugar, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, marjoram, parsley, pepper, lemon, sugar, milk. 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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