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Mushrooms En Croquettes

Mushrooms en Croquettes are fried mushroom balls coated in a chestnut paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushrooms En Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the onion and fry it with the mushrooms in butter until softened.

Make the chestnut paste

  1. Pound the chestnuts with the spice, salt, and pepper, then mix in the eggs to form a paste.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mushroom mixture into balls, cover them with the chestnut paste.

  2. Fry the balls in boiling oil 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + chestnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together474 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Onion + chestnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Mushrooms
Provide the main bulk and savory, earthy flavor of the filling.
Chestnuts
Form a starchy, dense paste that coats the balls and adds body.
Eggs
Bind the chestnut paste so it holds together around the mushroom balls.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while softening the onion and mushrooms.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in boiling oil. The oil must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly; if it is too cool, the paste absorbs oil and the croquettes turn greasy and may fall apart.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, onion, egg, butter, pepper):

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, onion, egg, butter, pepper. 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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