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Croquettes De Viande

A French dish of deep‑fried meat croquettes made with minced beef, ham, mushrooms, onion, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Croquettes De Viande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove excess fat, skin, and gristle from the meat and mince it finely, including the ham or tongue and mushrooms.

  2. Peel and finely chop the onion, then fry it in the butter until softened.

  3. Add the flour to the onion and stir for a few minutes over the heat.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix in the minced meat, season with salt, pepper, and herbs, then moisten with stock and heat thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the yolks of the eggs and continue stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a dish and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Divide into even portions and shape into cork or ball shapes.

  2. Dip each shape in beaten egg, roll in breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain and serve garnished with fried parsley.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and gives them their savoury, meaty body.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the mixture when stirred in, and beaten egg helps the breadcrumbs stick.
Flour
Cooked with the butter and onion, it helps thicken the mixture so it holds its shape.
Butter
Softens the onion and adds richness and flavour to the mixture.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. The yolks must be stirred in and the mixture kept moving so it thickens evenly. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the mixture is overheated or left still it can curdle or turn lumpy, and cooling it fully before shaping lets the portions hold together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, mushroom, butter, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, mushroom, butter, flour, pepper, 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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