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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes made with boiled chicken, sweetbreads, flour, butter, milk, seasonings, coated in cracker crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the boiled milk, cooking until the mixture thickens.

  3. Combine the thickened mixture with the chopped chicken and sweetbreads.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, grated onion, celery seeds, and nutmeg.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the filling.
Sweetbreads
Add a soft, tender texture to the filling.
Butter
Enriches the filling and adds richness to the flour-based sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a binding white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens with flour to bind the filling.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the cracker crumbs adhere and form a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk into the flour mixture. Adding the milk gradually and cooking until thickened lets the starch swell evenly. A smooth, stiff base binds the filling so the croquettes hold their shape when shaped and fried.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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