Name: Sweet Potato and Almond Croquettes
Ingredients: 4 cups sweet potatoes, baked and pulp removed; ¼ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 beaten egg; 3 tablespoons chopped, blanched almonds; hot milk or cream, as needed

Why it works: Sweet potato and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 62 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweet Potato and Almond Croquettes

Ingredients

4 cups sweet potatoes, baked and pulp removed
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter
1 beaten egg
3 tablespoons chopped, blanched almonds
hot milk or cream, as needed

Directions

Prepare the filling

Bake sweet potatoes until tender, then remove the pulp and pass it through a sieve.
In a bowl, combine the sweet potato pulp, salt, butter, beaten egg, and chopped almonds.
Add enough hot milk or cream to achieve a good handling consistency.

Shape and fry

Shape the mixture into croquettes, then dip in egg and coat with breadcrumbs.
Fry the croquettes in deep fat 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.

Sweet potato + almondtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together62 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together596 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes: Provide the bulk and soft, moist body of the croquette filling.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Egg: Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape.
Almonds: Add crunch and nutty flavour to the soft filling.
Milk or cream: Adds moisture so the mixture is soft enough to shape.

The step that matters

Add the hot milk or cream gradually. Too much liquid makes the mixture too soft to shape and it may burst or fall apart in the fat. Adding it a little at a time lets you stop once the mixture holds its shape.

Swap the sweet potato

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

Asparagusfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Sweet potatothe original
Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, almond, milk. 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.

Potato Croquettes255 recipes

Potato Rolls78 recipes

Roasted Sweet Potatoes62 recipes

Almond Soup60 recipes

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Sweet Potato and Almond Croquettes