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Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of mashed chicken mixed with cream, butter, and flour, shaped into balls and coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until very tender.

  2. Chop the white meat finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix cream, butter, and flour until it reaches a soft custard consistency.

  2. Pour the mixture over the chopped chicken and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Once cool, mold the mixture into balls.

Bread and fry

  1. Roll the balls in bread crumbs.

  2. Drop the croquettes into hot lard and fry until golden 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk of the croquette filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, helping the filling set smoothly and stay tender.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter into a custard that holds the balls together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before shaping. A warm, soft custard is too sticky to roll into balls and may slump or burst. Cooling lets the starch-thickened mixture firm up enough to hold its shape and keep its interior moist during frying.

“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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