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Croquettes of Colb Meat

Small pastry rounds filled with minced cold meat in a thick sauce, then fried until golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Croquettes of Colb Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the cold meat very finely and add the chopped parsley.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour over medium heat.

  3. Carefully add the stock, stirring until it boils.

  4. Add the minced meat and seasonings, keeping it over the heat until thoroughly hot.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a plate to cool.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour, then add the baking powder.

  2. Mix in enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the paste very thin and cut out rounds with a cutter.

  2. Wet the edges of each round and place a small teaspoon of the meat mixture in the center.

  3. Fold over and press the edges together to seal.

  4. Brush with egg and sprinkle with breadcrumbs.

  5. Heat a saucepan of boiling fat and fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  6. Drain on kitchen paper and serve arranged in a circle on a folded napkin.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Cold meat
Forms the savoury filling that gives the croquettes their main body and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce and forms the structure of the pastry paste.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to both the filling sauce and the pastry.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the paste to lighten its texture as it cooks.
Stock
Liquid that turns the flour and butter into a binding sauce for the meat.

The step that matters

Seal the croquettes. Wet the edges before pressing them closed so the paste bonds firmly. A weak seal lets filling leak out into the hot fat and can cause the croquettes to break open while frying.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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