Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Croustades
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the potato paste
Peel the potatoes.
Boil the peeled potatoes for 10 minutes.
Strain the boiled potatoes.
Add butter and salt to the potatoes.
Cover the potatoes.
Steam until fully cooked.
Stir in egg yolks and nutmeg.
Cook for 5 minutes.
Pass the mixture through a sieve.
Form the sieved mixture into a paste.
Shape and fry
Flatten the paste to ½ inch thick.
Cut the flattened paste into 2-inch cylinders.
Coat each cylinder with egg.
Coat each cylinder with bread crumbs.
Mark the top of each cylinder with a smaller cutter.
Fry the coated cylinders in hot lard until golden.
Remove the top of each fried cylinder.
Hollow out the inside of each cylinder.
Fill and serve
Fill each hollowed case with mince.
Replace the covers on each case.
Serve the filled croustades.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,052 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,997 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Form the bulk of the paste, giving the cases their soft, starchy body.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, softening the potato paste and improving its flavour.
- Egg yolks
- Bind the potato paste and add richness so it holds its shape.
- Egg
- Helps the bread crumbs stick to the cylinders and forms a crisp, golden coating.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crunchy outer crust that browns when fried.
- Mince
- Provides the savoury filling that sits inside the fried case.
The step that matters
Fry the coated cylinders in hot lard until golden. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it browns. Hot oil seals the crumb quickly, giving a crisp, golden shell that holds its shape.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, nutmeg, bread):
- Shallotfits better
- Leekfits better
- Chivefits about as well
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, nutmeg, bread. 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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