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Croquettes of Chicken

A fried pastry shell filled with minced chicken and ham.

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

Croquettes of Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Gradually add the flour, stirring continuously to avoid lumps.

  3. Let it boil for four minutes, then add the cream, lemon juice, salt, white pepper, and cayenne.

  4. Stir in the minced chicken and ham, then remove from heat.

Shape and coat

  1. For the pastry, sift the flour onto a board, add the butter, and mix lightly with water.

  2. Roll out the pastry and cut into circles using a cutter dipped in hot water.

  3. Place a small amount of the prepared meat in the center of each circle, fold, and seal.

  4. Beat the egg and brush each croquette, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot fat until pale brown.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Butter
Enriches the flour paste and adds richness and flavor to the pastry.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture into a stable base and forms the pastry structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the filling a smooth, soft texture.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere to each croquette.
Prepared meat
Forms the main filling, providing savoury flavor and body.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. Adding flour gradually while stirring constantly keeps lumps from forming, giving the thickened base a smooth texture before the cream is added.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, lemon, pepper, butter, flour, meat, chicken. 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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