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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are breaded fried patties of chicken mixed with parsley, lemon, celery, onion, cayenne, and thick white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine the chicken with parsley, lemon juice, celery, onion juice, cayenne, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Mix the chicken mixture into the thick white sauce until well combined.

  3. Spread the mixture onto a pan to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the cooled mixture into croquettes.

  2. Coat each croquette in breadcrumbs.

  3. Dip each coated croquette in beaten egg.

  4. Coat each egg-dipped croquette again in breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain the fried croquettes on paper towels.

  3. Serve the croquettes on a hot platter with a fringed napkin.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped chicken
Forms the main body of the croquette filling.
Thick white sauce
Binds the chicken so the filling holds its shape when cooled and shaped.
Breadcrumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Beaten egg (in the method)
Helps the breadcrumbs adhere and form a second, sturdier coating.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. The white sauce must cool and firm up so the mixture holds its shape; shaping it warm makes it soft and likely to break or leak during frying.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, lemon, celery, onion, sauce):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, lemon, celery, onion, sauce. 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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