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Salmon Croquettes

Salmon croquettes are small patties of flaked salmon mixed with white sauce, cayenne pepper, lemon juice and salt, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried.

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

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmon Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the flaked salmon, thick white sauce, cayenne pepper, lemon juice and salt until well combined.

  2. Cool the mixture and shape it into small patties.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each patty in egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  2. Heat oil in a deep pan and fry the croquettes 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.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Salmon
Forms the main body and flavour of the croquettes.
Thick white sauce
Binds the salmon so the mixture holds its shape when formed into patties.
Egg
Helps the breadcrumb coating stick and adds a crisp, golden surface.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. Cooling firms the thick white sauce so the patties hold their shape. Shaping a warm mixture can make it slump and tear, and the patties may then break apart in the oil.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, sauce, pepper, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Mangofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, sauce, pepper, 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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