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Sweet Potato Croquettes

A fried snack of mashed sweet potatoes mixed with butter, salt, cayenne, and cream, coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel and mash the potatoes through a colander.

  3. Add butter, salt, cayenne, and cream; beat until light.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

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

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the croquettes their soft, moist interior.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, making the mash light and easy to shape.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the croquettes absorb grease and turn soggy before the crumb coating browns. Hot oil quickly sets and browns the crust while the interior heats through.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, egg, bread. 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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