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Chicken Croquette

A fried chicken croquette made with a creamy sauce and coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Cream butter and flour together in a saucepan.

  2. Add cream and stock to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in beaten egg yolks and lemon juice, mixing well.

  4. Cook mixture for five minutes, then pour over chopped chicken.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, mix thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, shape mixture into small balls.

  2. Dip each ball into lard, then roll in cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry croquettes 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.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their savoury flavour.
Butter
Enriches the base and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture so it holds its shape.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firmly when cooked.
Stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Cooling before shaping. The mixture must cool and firm up before it is shaped; if warm, it stays soft and sticky and the balls can fall apart in the frying fat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, flour, butter, egg, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, flour, butter, egg, pepper. 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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