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Meat and Potato Croquettes

A fried croquette made with chopped meat, mashed potatoes, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Meat and Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the meat, potatoes, and seasoning in a bowl.

  2. In a frying pan, heat the milk and butter until boiling.

  3. Add the meat and potatoes to the boiling mixture and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Beat one egg and stir it into the hot mixture immediately.

  5. Pour the mixture onto a plate and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape into cylinders about 3 inches long.

  2. Bread the croquettes using the second egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Supplies the main filling and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Mashed potatoes
Give the mixture body and a soft texture that helps it hold its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the bread crumbs stick to the outside.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mixture stays soft and creamy inside.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mixture.
Dried bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown crust when fried.

The step that matters

Stir the egg into the hot mixture immediately. Beaten egg set by heat binds the filling. If the mixture cools before the egg is added, the egg will not blend evenly, and the croquettes may fall apart when shaped and fried.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, bread, meat, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, bread, meat, 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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