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Baked Beef Croquettes

A baked dish of seasoned ground beef formed into croquettes and coated with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Baked Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine ground beef, white sauce, salt, pepper, grated onion, and chopped parsley.

  2. Cook the mixture until the meat is heated through, then transfer to a greased plate to cool.

  3. Shape the cooled mixture into croquettes.

  4. Roll each croquette in sifted bread crumbs.

Bake

  1. Place the croquettes on a buttered baking pan.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until crisp and 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Ground beef
Forms the main body of the croquette and provides the savory filling.
White sauce
Binds the meat together and keeps the filling moist and soft inside.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose filling is hard to shape and can fall apart or stick during rolling. Cooling firms the white sauce so the croquettes hold their form through breading and baking.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sauce, pepper, onion, bread, butter):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sauce, pepper, onion, bread, butter. 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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