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Macaroni Croquettes

Macaroni croquettes are fried balls of macaroni, cheese, and milk mixture, served on beetroot or cucumber slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Macaroni Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the macaroni base

  1. Cook the macaroni in boiling water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the macaroni and chop finely.

  3. Melt the butter in a pan. Stir in the flour.

  4. Add the milk, cooking while beating continuously until thick.

  5. Stir in the chopped macaroni and grated cheese.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  7. Allow the mixture to cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small pear‑shaped croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

  4. Drain the croquettes on paper towels.

Serve

  1. Serve the croquettes on slices of cooked beetroot or cucumber, garnished with a small stalk of fresh parsley.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Flour + beetroottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it a firm, substantial body.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries the flour, adding richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a binding sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a thick, smooth white sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps bind the mixture as it melts into the sauce.
Egg
Coats the shaped croquettes so the crumbs adhere and set into a crisp shell.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture completely before shaping. A warm, loose mixture cannot hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch in the flour-and-milk sauce set so the croquettes keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cheese, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cheese, pepper, egg, 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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