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Meat Croquettes—chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of minced meat mixed with soaked bread, herbs, and spices, formed into balls and coated before frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Meat Croquettes—chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the soaked bread with the minced meat, parsley, ginger, eggs, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Shape the mixture into egg-shaped balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each ball in flour, then dip in beaten eggs.

  2. Fry in boiling drippings until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + macetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Parsley + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together676 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds moisture and softness to the meat mixture.
Minced meat
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their savory filling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set on heat, holding the croquettes in shape.
Flour
Dries the surface so the beaten egg coating sticks and browns evenly.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, aromatic flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling drippings until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to set the egg coating quickly; if it is too cool, the croquettes absorb fat, turn greasy, and can fall apart before the coating firms.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, meat, parsley, ginger, egg, pepper, flour):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, parsley, ginger, egg, pepper, flour. 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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