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Sauce

Sauce for Croquette Mixture

A creamy sauce used to bind minced meat for croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sauce for Croquette Mixture

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, scald the milk or cream.

  2. Rub the butter and flour together to form a paste.

  3. Stir the paste into the scalding milk until thickened.

  4. Add the onion juice, salt, pepper, cayenne, and nutmeg.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in a beaten egg (optional).

  6. Return to heat for 1 minute without boiling.

Add the meat and set

  1. Add 2 cups of finely minced meat.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a flat dish and refrigerate for 2 hours to set.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Flour
Mixed with butter to form a paste that thickens the milk into a sauce.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a paste that helps thicken the sauce and adds richness.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the sauce.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the sauce, which is optional in the method.

The step that matters

Return to heat for 1 minute without boiling. Boiling a starch-thickened, egg-enriched sauce can break it or leave it grainy, while gentle heat keeps it smooth and lets the starch from the flour fully set the texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg, nutmeg. 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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