Name: Chicken Croquettes
Ingredients: ¼ pound butter; ½ cup sweet cream; 3 tablespoons stock; 3 tablespoons flour; ¼ cup chicken stock; ¼ can mushrooms, chopped; juice of ½ lemon; 1 cold chicken, minced; 2 sweetbreads, par-boiled (or substitute with rice); salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; a pinch of nutmeg; a little onion, optional; 1 tumbler cream; 2 tablespoons butter; 4 tablespoons flour; beaten yolk of 1 egg; cracker crumbs; boiling lard for frying

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 ↓

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,172 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,769 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 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

Butter: Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour: Thickens the cream and stock into a binding sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Cream: Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, soft texture.
Chicken: Forms the main filling, providing the bulk and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Beaten egg yolk: Acts as a binder for the cracker crumb coating and helps it brown when fried.
Cracker crumbs: Form a crisp, golden outer crust during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its shape when shaped and coated, so it can fall apart in the hot lard. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce so the croquettes keep their form.

Swap the lemon

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

Coconutfits better
Avocadofits about as well
Lemonthe original
Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, flour, chicken, mushroom, rice, 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.

Chicken Croquettes