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Sweet Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from sweet potato, butter, egg, and breadcrumbs.

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

  1. In a bowl, combine hot riced sweet potatoes, butter, salt, pepper, and beaten egg.

  2. If the potatoes are very dry, add hot milk to moisten the mixture.

  3. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in bread crumbs, then in the beaten egg, and coat again with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in deep fat until golden brown, then drain on paper towels.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, moist body that holds the croquette together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist interior.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture and helps the bread crumb coating adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.
Hot milk
Adds moisture to dry potatoes so the mixture shapes easily.

The step that matters

Checking the moisture of the potato mixture. Dry potatoes crack when shaped and fall apart in hot fat. Adding hot milk only as needed keeps the mixture cohesive without making it wet and loose.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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