Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquets

A fried patty of seasoned chicken, ham, tongue, mushrooms, truffle, and breadcrumbs, coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken Croquets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove all bones, skin, and gristle from the fowl or turkey and finely chop the meat.

  2. Mix the chopped meat with the ham, tongue, mushrooms, truffle, and breadcrumbs.

  3. Melt butter in a pan. Fry the shallots until soft.

  4. Add the meat mixture. Season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Stir in a little béchamel and the egg yolks.

  6. Cook over low heat until the mixture sets.

  7. Spread the mixture on a flat dish and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into balls, cutlets, or cork shapes of even size.

  2. Dip each shape in egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in hot clarified fat until golden brown.

  4. Drain on paper.

  5. Garnish with parsley. Serve.

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 + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

Remains of any fowl or turkey
Provides the main cooked meat that forms the body of the croquettes.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set firm when cooked.
Butter
Enriches the shallots and adds richness to the filling.
White breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture in the filling and form the crisp outer coating.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.
Truffle
Adds a strong earthy aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until the mixture sets. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but high heat can curdle or scorch them and make the filling dry or grainy. Gentle heat lets the mixture set evenly so the shapes hold together when fried.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turkey, ham, mushroom, truffle, butter, shallot, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turkey, ham, mushroom, truffle, butter, shallot, 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.

More chicken croquettes recipes

Mock 6Italian 4 See all 418 →

You might also like

Turkey SoupTurkey Soup71 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTurkey StuffingTurkey Stuffing26 recipesTurkey DressingTurkey Dressing24 recipes