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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are fried breaded chicken cakes made with cream, butter, flour, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 chicken filling

  1. Combine the chicken with salt, white pepper, and onion juice.

  2. In a frying pan, heat the cream slowly.

  3. In a separate bowl, stir the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the boiling cream.

  4. Mix well and add the chicken, stirring for 3 minutes.

  5. Quickly stir in the beaten eggs and remove from heat.

  6. Pour the mixture onto a platter and let it cool for 2 to 3 hours.

Bread and fry

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into croquettes, then bread them.

  2. Fry the croquettes in deep 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 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

Chicken
Forms the main body and bulk of the croquette filling.
Cream
Provides moisture and richness so the filling stays creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the cream sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that holds the chicken together.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set it firm when stirred in with heat.

The step that matters

Quickly stir in the beaten eggs and remove from heat. Eggs scramble if they sit over direct heat, leaving lumps. Stirring them in quickly and taking the pan off the heat lets them thicken gently into the sauce, so the filling binds smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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