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Celery Croquettes

A savory dish of small, breadcrumb‑coated croquettes made from cooked celery, butter, flour, water, cream, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Celery Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Celery Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Cut well-cleaned celery into very small pieces and cook in boiling salted water until soft.

  2. Drain the celery and mix it with a sauce made by melting butter and stirring in flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the drained water from the celery, cream, and salt to the sauce.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes while stirring.

  3. Add a slightly beaten egg and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Shape and coat

  1. Mix the celery with the sauce, then shape into croquettes and coat with breadcrumbs.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Flour
Thickens the butter into a sauce that binds the celery together.
Egg
Sets when cooked, helping the croquette mixture hold its shape.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce, softening its texture.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and carries flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce with the egg. Adding the egg and cooking gently keeps it from scrambling, while enough heat sets it so the mixture holds its shape when shaped and coated.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, 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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