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Cheese Croquettes

Cheese croquettes are fried cheese balls made from a béchamel sauce with Gruyère and mild cheese, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Gruyere cheese and cheese share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 93 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cheese Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until well blended.

  3. Gradually pour in the milk while stirring constantly until the mixture reaches a boil.

  4. Add the unbeaten yolks of the eggs and stir until well mixed.

  5. Stir in the grated Gruyère cheese until melted.

  6. Remove the sauce from the heat.

  7. Fold in the mild cheese cubes and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Cool and shape

  1. Spread the mixture in a shallow pan.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Turn the cooled mixture out onto a board.

  4. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in breadcrumbs.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg.

  3. Dip each croquette in breadcrumbs again.

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

  5. Drain the fried croquettes on paper.

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. Gruyere cheese + cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Butter + gruyere cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together323 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds flavour as the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the mixture and help bind it into a firm, shapeable paste.
Gruyère cheese
Melts into the sauce to give a strong, nutty cheese flavour.
Mild cheese
Adds soft, melting pieces that make the croquette centre creamy.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture fully before shaping. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its shape and may split or tear during dipping and frying. Cooling lets the starch in the flour-thickened sauce set into a firm paste that can be formed and coated cleanly.

“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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