Skip to main content
Main

Epicurean Croquettes

A fish croquette made from flaked finnan haddie mixed with vegetables, flour, milk, and spices, then shaped and fried.

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

Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Epicurean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the finnan haddie in equal parts milk and water for 1 hour.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Bake the haddie for 30 minutes.

  4. Drain the haddie.

  5. Separate the haddie into flakes; you should have about 1¾ cups.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the shallot, green pepper, and red pepper in butter for 5 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and 1 cup of milk. Stir until smooth.

  3. Stir in the flaked finnan haddie, salt, paprika, and pepper.

  4. Cool the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape it into croquettes.

  2. Coat with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry until golden.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Finnan haddie
Provides the main smoky, flaky fish body of the croquettes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and cooks the vegetables gently without browning.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose filling is too soft to hold its shape. Chilling lets the starch in the flour-thickened sauce set, so the croquettes keep their form and do not break apart when fried.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

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

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes