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Almond Croquettes

A fried snack made from a mixture of butter, milk, flour, and ground almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the almond mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the milk and season with coarse sea salt.

  3. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  4. Mix in the ground and browned almonds.

Shape and fry

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it onto a flat dish and cut into squares.

  2. Fry the squares in hot oil 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a paste that holds the mixture together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the mixture and helps it set smoothly.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool before cutting. The flour-thickened mixture must cool and firm up fully; if cut while warm it stays soft and may not hold its square shape in the hot oil.

“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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