Skip to main content
Main

Bean Croquettes

Bean croquettes made from mashed haricot beans, tomatoes, breadcrumbs, herbs, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Bean Croquettes

Why it works: Beans and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,713 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the cold boiled haricot beans in a bowl.

  2. Add the baked tomatoes, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and thyme; mix until stiff enough to mold.

  3. Shape the mixture into flat cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cake in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the cakes in hot lard 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. Beans + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beans + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together488 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the cakes and give them a soft, starchy body.
Baked tomatoes
Add moisture and a mild acidic sweetness to the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture so the mixture firms up enough to shape, and form a crisp coating.
Egg
Binds the coating to the cakes and helps the crumbs stick during frying.

The step that matters

Mix until stiff enough to mold. If the mixture is too wet, the cakes will fall apart in the hot lard. Enough bread crumbs must be absorbed so the cakes hold their shape while frying.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, bread, pepper, thyme, egg):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Peasfits less well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, bread, pepper, thyme, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes