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Porcupine Croquettes

A croquette made from finely chopped cold cooked meat mixed with butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, then coated with flour, egg, and vermicelli and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Porcupine Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold cooked meat finely and season with onion juice, nutmeg, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the boiling cream or milk.

  3. Cook the mixture until thick, then stir in the seasoned meat.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette in flour, then dip in the beaten egg, and finally coat with crushed vermicelli.

  3. Fry the croquettes in boiling fat 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.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their savory flavor.
Butter and flour
Cooked with the cream or milk to thicken it into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Cream or milk
Forms the thickened base that gives the filling moisture and a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the crumb coating adheres and browns during frying.
Vermicelli
Crushed to form a crisp outer crumb that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until thick. The flour must be fully cooked into the boiling cream or milk so it thickens properly. Enough thickening lets the filling set firm enough to shape and hold together in the frying fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, nutmeg, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, cream. 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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