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Potato Croquettes

A fried ball of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, flour, milk, and salt, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Ensure the mashed potatoes are very smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, rub together the butter and flour until combined. Let the mixture boil, then pour in the milk and let it boil once.

  3. Stir in the mashed potatoes and season with salt to taste.

  4. Pour the mixture onto a platter to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into balls.

  2. Roll the balls in cracker crumbs. Dip the balls in the beaten egg. Coat again with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until pale 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the croquette, giving a soft, starchy interior.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the base mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Milk
Moistens the flour-butter mixture into a smooth, cohesive base.
Egg
Binds the cracker crumbs to the croquette surface during coating.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is too sticky to form balls cleanly and may split or lose its shape. Cooling lets the starches set so the coating adheres and holds during frying.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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