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Curry Croquettes

Curry croquettes are meat and rice balls coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Curry Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove skin, gristle, and excess fat from the meat and mince it.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the chopped onion until soft but not browned.

  3. Stir in the curry powder and flour, cooking until just combined.

  4. Add the minced meat and lemon juice, cooking for a few more minutes.

  5. Mix in the boiled rice and stock.

  6. Stir in the beaten egg until just combined. Add salt.

  7. Spread the mixture on a dish to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape into equal-sized balls.

  2. Coat the balls in egg and breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fried croquettes.

  3. Serve in a pile, 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

  4. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  5. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the main filling and savoury flavour, bound together by the rice and egg.
Boiled rice
Adds body and bulk, helping the mixture hold its shape when cooled.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder that helps the mixture hold together and gives the coated shapes a set crust.
Flour
Thickens the stock and onion mixture so it becomes firm enough to shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and softens the onion without heavy browning.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and flavour that defines the dish.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture on a dish to cool. The filling must cool and firm up fully before shaping. As it cools, the starch from the flour and rice sets, so warm mixture stays too soft to form balls that hold together in hot oil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, butter, flour, lemon, egg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, butter, flour, lemon, egg, parsley. 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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