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Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of ground chicken mixed with mushrooms, bread, butter, eggs, and seasonings, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chicken.

  2. Grind the meat with the mushrooms.

  3. Soak the stale bread in the chicken broth.

  4. Add the soaked bread to the meat and mushrooms.

  5. Mix in the butter and eggs until well combined.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, celery salt, parsley, onion, and nutmeg.

  7. Pour the mixture onto a platter.

  8. Let it cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll the croquettes in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes 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.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape while frying.
Stale bread
Soaked in broth, it adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a tender texture.
Chicken broth
Moistens the soaked bread and keeps the filling from drying out.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the ground meat filling.

The step that matters

Let it cool completely. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to shape and will split or fall apart in hot oil. Chilling firms the fat and binders so the croquettes hold together when fried.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, mushroom, bread, butter, egg, pepper, parsley. 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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