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Chicken Croquettes

A savory dish of sweetbread and chicken mixture formed into croquettes, coated in crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in boiling water for 10 minutes.

  2. Grind the sweetbreads very fine with the chicken.

  3. Add seasoning.

  4. In a stew pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until it bubbles.

  5. Gradually add the cream.

  6. Stir in the chicken mixture until heated through.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Add lemon juice.

  9. Let cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten eggs thinned with milk.

  3. Coat with cracker crumbs.

  4. Let them dry.

  5. Dip again in eggs and coat with bread crumbs.

  6. Season all crumbs with salt and pepper before frying.

Fry

  1. Fry quickly in boiling fat.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, mild meat that forms the body of the filling.
Chicken
Supplies the main meat in the filling, giving bulk and savory flavor.
Flour
Cooked with the butter to form a roux that thickens the cream into a binding sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, producing a smooth, creamy filling that holds its shape.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux, adding richness and flavor to the filling.
Eggs (in the method)
Form the coating that helps the crumbs adhere and brown during frying.

The step that matters

Let cool before shaping. A warm, loose filling is too soft to hold its shape and can burst or fall apart in the hot fat. Cooling lets the starch-thickened cream set so the croquettes keep their form.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, flour, cream, butter, onion, parsley, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, flour, cream, butter, onion, parsley, lemon. 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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