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Shad Roe Croquettes

Shad roe croquettes are small, fried balls made from boiled shad roe mixed with white sauce and egg, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shad Roe Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Cook the shad roe in boiling salted water with lemon juice for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the roe and cut it into fine pieces.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the roe with the heavy white sauce and add the egg.

  2. Cook the mixture for 5 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Shape the mixture into croquettes when cold.

Coat and serve

  1. Coat the croquettes with egg and breadcrumbs.

  2. Serve with Hollandaise or cucumber sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Roe + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Roe + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Shad roe
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their rich flavour.
Heavy white sauce
Binds the chopped roe together and keeps the mixture moist.
Egg
Helps bind the mixture and sets it as it cooks.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture for 5 minutes. The egg in the mixture sets when heated, which helps the croquettes hold their shape. Cooking the mixture until it is firm and then chilling it before shaping makes it easier to form and less likely to fall apart.

“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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