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Chicken and Sweetbread Croquettes

A fried croquette made from minced chicken and sweetbreads mixed with butter or stock, cream, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

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

Chicken and Sweetbread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Stir the minced chicken and sweetbreads into the drawn butter or thickened chicken stock.

  2. Heat the mixture in a vessel set in boiling water until hot throughout.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Add the hot cream and beaten egg yolks; mix well.

  5. Set the mixture in a cold place until solid.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Coat the croquettes with egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Chill the croquettes on ice for 1 hour.

  4. Fry the croquettes in deep, hot cottolene.

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

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

  2. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Chicken + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sweetbreads
Provides the tender, rich meat that forms the body of the filling.
White roux
Thickens the butter or stock so the filling holds together when shaped.
Hot cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft and smooth.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set on heating, helping the croquettes hold their shape.
Drawn butter
Adds fat and flavour, carrying the minced chicken and sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Set the mixture until solid before shaping. The filling must be cold and firm before shaping, or it will be too soft to hold its form. Chilling again after breading keeps the coating from loosening 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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