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Chicken Croquettes

A fried ball of chicken, flour, butter, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 263 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, stir the flour and butter together to form a smooth paste.

  2. Boil the milk, salt, and summer savory together.

  3. Add the butter, flour, chicken, and beaten eggs to the boiling mixture.

  4. Cook everything together for a few minutes, then set aside to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in boiling lard until they are a delicate brown.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Summer savory + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the croquettes together.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a paste that gives the mixture body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the mixture and aiding browning.
Milk or cream
Provides moisture and creaminess that makes the mixture smooth and tender.
Cooked chicken meat
Supplies the main filling, giving flavor and body to the croquettes.

The step that matters

Cooling before shaping. The mixture must cool enough to firm up before forming balls; if it is still hot and loose, the croquettes will not hold their shape and may break apart in the fat.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Summer savorythe original

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