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Chicken Croquettes

A fried chicken mixture formed into balls, thickened with butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with salt, sherry, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until very smooth.

  2. Stir the mixture into the boiling cream until it thickens.

  3. Add the salt and remove from the stove.

  4. Stir in the chopped chicken, sherry, onion, and parsley.

  5. Set aside to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls.

  2. Fry the balls in hot lard until golden 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux that thickens the cream into a binding sauce.
Boiled cream
Forms the moist base that holds the chicken together.
Chicken
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the croquettes.

The step that matters

Set aside to cool. The mixture must be cool and thick enough to hold its shape when formed into balls. If it is still warm and loose, the balls will slump and may break apart in the hot lard.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, butter, flour, sherry, wine, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, butter, flour, sherry, wine, onion. 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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