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Chicken Croquettes

Fried pastry shells filled with a chicken mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Hamilton, Margaret · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,389 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mince 2 oz of chicken finely. Combine with 1 pint milk or stock.

  2. In a saucepan, blend 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour.

  3. Add milk slowly. Let mixture boil up.

  4. Add to chicken to form a stiff paste. Add pinch of mace, a teaspoonful of salt, a spoon of pepper.

  5. Let cool.

Make the pastry

  1. Make a paste of four ounces of flour, two ounces of lard and butter, a little salt, moisten with an egg, and a little water to the proper stiffness.

  2. Roll the paste out twice.

  3. Cut it with a round tin cutter four inches wide.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll pastry very thin. Cut into rounds.

  2. Brush each round and on each put a good teaspoonful of the chicken mixture.

  3. Double-paste over and pinch in egg and bread-crumbs.

  4. Brush the round edges with beaten egg. Put a little of the mince in the centre of each.

  5. Turn them over and bring the edges together. Press them down to make them stick.

  6. Brush with egg. Strew over either some vermicelli boiled and dried, or grated egg.

  7. Fry in boiling fat until a nice light brown.

  8. Lay on a sieve before the fire to drain. Keep them hot.

  9. Dish on a napkin and garnish with parsley.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

890Calories
52 gProtein
26 gFat
108 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chicken100g cooked165
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

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

By Hamilton, Margaret. 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. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Chicken
Forms the main filling and gives the croquettes their savoury body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff paste that holds the filling together.
Lard
Adds fat to the pastry, making it tender and flaky when fried.
Milk
Moistens the flour roux to form a smooth, creamy binding for the filling.
Egg (in the method)
Glues the pastry edges together and gives the surface a golden browning when fried.

The step that matters

Sealing the croquettes. If the edges are not pressed firmly together, the filling can leak out during frying. Brushing with beaten egg helps the pastry seal and brown evenly.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, chicken, 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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