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Side Dishes and Salads

Croquettes are small cakes or balls of meat mixed with bread, butter, flour, and spices, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson." · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Side Dishes and Salads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Take any kind of cold meat or fowl, with slices of ham, lean and fat. Chop them together very finely, with one-third of stale bread grated, add salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, a little catsup, and a lump of butter.

  2. Mix all together, and make into small cakes or balls.

  3. Dip each cake into yolk of egg well beaten, cover quickly with grated bread and fry until brown.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Stir two ounces butter and two dessert-spoonsful flour over the fire for a few moments, then add a teacupful cream.

  2. Stir until the mixture is thick as porridge.

  3. Have ready the white meat of fowl, minced very finely, and a little minced ham.

  4. Put the minced meat into the mixture, put it on the fire, stirring well but not long.

Shape and fry

  1. When cold, make into croquette shape, cover with egg and roll in bread-crumbs or cracker dust, and fry in boiling lard.

  2. Cold veal is quite as good as fowls.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

575Calories
13 gProtein
14 gFat
98 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson.". 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. See the original page.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stiff base for the meat.
Cream (in the method)
Makes the sauce moist and creamy so the mixture holds together.
Stale bread (in the method)
Absorbs moisture and binds the chopped meat into shapeable cakes.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thick, then add the meat briefly. Cooking the flour and butter before adding cream prevents a raw starchy taste and lumps. Stirring the meat in only briefly keeps the mixture thick enough to shape instead of loosening or drying out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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.

More croquettes recipes

Chicken 418Rice 315Potato 311Salmon 133Fish 130Veal 119 See all 50 →

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