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A Seasonable Entree

A dish of croquettes made from shad roe, cream, eggs, and seasonings, served with lemon or tartare sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Wash the shad roe and place them in a saucepan with salted boiling water.

  2. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the shad roe from the heat, take off the skin, and mash them.

Make the custard base

  1. Bring the cream to a boil.

  2. In a separate pan, rub the butter and flour together over low heat until combined, but do not brown. Gradually stir in the boiling cream and boil for 3 minutes until thick.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks while still boiling. Add the mashed shad roe and all other ingredients, mixing well.

  4. Spread the mixture on a dish to cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Once cold, form into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Let them stand in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

  4. Fry the croquettes in boiling lard until golden brown.

  5. Drain on folded paper before serving.

  6. Serve with lemon quarters or tartare sauce.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Roe + eggtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together238 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roe
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their rich flavour.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the base, helping it become a smooth, thick mixture.
Egg yolks
Stir into the hot base to thicken it and bind the mixture together.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the cream into a binding base.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the croquettes are fried.

The step that matters

Cooling and chilling before frying. The mixture must be fully cold and firm before shaping, and chilled after coating, so the croquettes hold their shape and do not burst or fall apart in hot fat.

“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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