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Cold Beef Croquettes

A dish of croquettes made from cold cooked beef mixed with milk, ginger, onion, pepper, salt, egg, and breaded before frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,800 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the cold meat on a clean surface with the milk, discarding any fibers.

  2. Grind the ginger, onion, pepper, and salt, then mix with the ground meat and add the egg.

Cook and serve

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes, roll each in bread crumbs, and fry until light brown.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Ginger + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked meat
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their savory flavor.
Egg
Binds the ground meat mixture so the croquettes hold their shape while frying.
Cow's milk
Moistens the ground meat, keeping the croquettes tender rather than dry.
Ghee
Fat used for frying, adding richness and promoting browning on the outside.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness to the mixture as it is cooked.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the bread crumb coating while the inside heats through. Too little heat leaves the crumbs pale and greasy, and too much browns the outside before the centre is hot.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, milk, ghee, egg, bread, onion, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, ghee, egg, bread, onion, 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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