Skip to main content
Main

Egg Croquettes

Egg croquettes are small fried cakes made from boiled eggs, parsley, mushrooms, and white sauce, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the eggs in water just off the boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cold, remove the shells and chop the whites finely.

  3. Sift the yolks and mix them with the chopped whites and the slightly beaten egg.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, parsley or chives, and add cooked mushrooms if desired.

  5. Mix in the heavy white sauce and set aside until cold.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Mould the mixture into croquettes, dip in breadcrumbs, then in the beaten egg.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with white sauce or add peas, small beans, mushrooms, or asparagus tips.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-boiled yolks and whites form the bulk and body of the croquette filling.
Heavy white sauce
Binds the chopped egg into a mixture that holds its shape when moulded.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust that browns in the hot oil.
Beaten egg
Acts as a glue so the breadcrumbs stick to the croquettes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before moulding. Warm filling is soft and loose, so croquettes may slump or split. Chilling firms the fat and starch in the white sauce so the shapes hold during coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, mushroom, sauce):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mushroom, 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.

More egg croquettes recipes

Hard Boiled 3 See all 42 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes