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Chicken Croquettes

A fried patty of chicken mixed with cream, flour, eggs, and seasonings, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the cream or stock in a double boiler.

  2. Mix the flour and butter together, then stir the mixture into the boiling cream.

  3. Add the chicken, salt, pepper, onion juice, and lemon juice.

  4. Boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Add 2 beaten eggs.

  6. Remove from heat.

  7. Let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Brush the croquettes with egg.

  3. Roll the croquettes in breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry the croquettes.

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. Pepper + lemontop 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. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their main flavor.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the filling so it holds its shape, and form a coating for the breadcrumbs.
Flour
Thickens the cream or stock with butter, giving the filling a body firm enough to shape.
Cream or chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that binds the chicken.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds flavor to the filling.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let cool before shaping. The filling must be cool and firm enough to hold its shape. Shaping it while hot makes it soft and sticky, so the croquettes can break or lose their form during rolling and frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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