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Cheese Croquettes

Cheese croquettes are small fried cheese and breadcrumb balls served with parsley and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cheese Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine grated cheese and bread crumbs.

  2. Season with salt and white pepper.

  3. Add the beaten egg whites and mix until well combined.

  4. Form the mixture into small croquettes.

  5. Dredge each croquette in additional bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep frying fat in a pan.

  2. Fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels.

  4. Serve immediately with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  4. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated cheese
Provides the main flavor and melts to bind the croquettes with a rich, savory filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body, and the outer coating crisps when fried.
Egg whites
Bind the cheese and crumbs together so the croquettes hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes until golden brown. Frying at a steady, hot temperature sets the crumb coating quickly and crisps it before the cheese inside melts out. Frying too cool makes the croquettes greasy and prone to falling apart.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, bread, egg, parsley, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, bread, egg, parsley, lemon. 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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