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Salmon Croquettes

A fried salmon croquette made with salmon, béchamel, cream, sherry, egg yolks, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Salmon Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Salmon Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Boil the salmon remains in 1 pint of water until reduced to ½ pint for stock.

  2. Tear the salmon flesh into shreds.

  3. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a béchamel sauce using the fish stock.

  4. Once thick and smooth, add the cream, sherry, and beaten egg yolks, stirring gently.

  5. Heat until just boiling, then fold in the salmon flakes.

Chill and shape

  1. Spread the mixture an inch thick on a buttered plate and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Shape the cold mixture into cork or egg shapes, then crumb them.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in very hot fat for 2 minutes until golden.

  2. Garnish with fried parsley and serve with cucumber salad.

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. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Salmon flakes
Provide the main fish body and flavour of the croquette filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a béchamel that holds the filling together.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set firm when chilled and fried.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a softer, smoother texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the roux that starts the béchamel sauce.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture until cold. The filling must be fully cold and firm before shaping, or it stays soft and the croquettes can break or leak in the hot fat.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, flour, cream, sherry, egg, cucumber):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, cream, sherry, egg, cucumber. 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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