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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are oblong balls of minced chicken and veal mixed with bread, spices, and eggs, fried until brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the chicken and veal separately in cold water, just enough to cover them.

  2. Pick the meat from the bones and chop it finely.

  3. Soak the bread in the warm chicken broth.

Mix and shape

  1. Combine the chopped meat, soaked bread, salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg in a bowl.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and mix them with the other ingredients.

  3. Form the mixture into oblong balls.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in equal parts lard and butter until 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the croquettes hold their shape.
Bread
Soaked in broth, it adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Veal
Provides the bulk of the meat, giving the filling body and flavour.
Chicken
Supplies the main meat and rich broth used to soak the bread.
Lard and butter
Fry the balls, helping them brown and develop a golden crust.

The step that matters

Frying until brown. The balls must be fried in enough hot fat to brown evenly on the outside. Browning is driven by the Maillard reaction, which builds flavour and colour, and the fat keeps the outside crisp while the filling heats through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, veal, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, butter. 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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