Skip to main content
Main

Meat Croquettes

A fried meat patty coated in breadcrumbs, made with butter, flour, stock, milk, onion, lemon, spices, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Meat Croquettes

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 ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour.

  2. Add the stock and milk, and bring to a boil until thickened.

  3. Stir in the onion juice, lemon juice, lemon rind, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg and chopped meat.

Shape and fry

  1. Let the mixture cool, then shape it into cork-shaped croquettes.

  2. Coat the croquettes in finely grated bread crumbs.

  3. Heat lard in a pan and fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  4. Serve on a napkin, garnished with parsley and lemon rind.

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

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the flour roux, adding richness and a smooth base for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a binding sauce that holds the meat together.
Egg
Binds the cooled mixture so the croquettes hold their shape when fried.
Chopped meat
Forms the main filling, providing savoury substance and texture to the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp golden coating that browns when the croquettes are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot, loose mixture will not hold its shape and may fall apart in the fat. Cooling lets the flour-thickened sauce and egg firm up so the croquettes stay intact when fried.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More meat croquettes recipes

Cold 9Australian 3 See all 60 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes