Skip to main content
Main

Potato Croquettes

A fried potato croquette made with boiled potatoes, ham, nutmeg, pepper, salt, parsley, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Croquettes

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 ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pass the boiled potatoes through a sieve.

  2. Add the minced ham, grated nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley to the potatoes.

  3. Work in the egg yolks until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into balls and roll them in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot lard until golden brown.

  3. Serve with fried parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Form the starchy base that holds the croquette together and gives it a soft interior.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness so the croquettes hold their shape while frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.
Minced ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a bit of meaty texture to the potato.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy before browning, while the centre stays cool. Hot fat sets the crumb crust quickly and gives even golden browning.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, egg, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, egg, bread. 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.

More potato croquettes recipes

Sweet 58 See all 311 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes