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Eat Croquettes

Croquettes made from cold roast meat, bread crumbs, milk, egg, and fine cracker crumbs, fried in butter and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the cold roast meat and season with pepper.

  2. Add ⅓ cup of bread crumbs and a little milk to the meat.

  3. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball into beaten egg, then coat with fine cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley before serving.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast meat
Forms the main body of the croquettes and provides their savory flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the milk and help the mixture hold its shape.
Egg
Binds the coating so the cracker crumbs adhere to each croquette.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the outside.

The step that matters

Shaping the balls. If the mixture is too wet or not bound well, the balls can crack or fall apart in the fat. Flouring the hands keeps the mixture from sticking, and the egg and crumb coating adds a protective layer that helps the croquettes hold together during frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, bread, milk, egg, 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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