Skip to main content
Main

Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from mashed potatoes mixed with egg, butter, milk, spices, shaped into croquettes, coated, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine mashed potatoes, egg, butter, milk, nutmeg, lemon peel, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly for 3 minutes.

  3. Once cool enough to handle, shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the croquettes in flour or dip them in beaten egg and coat with cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in boiling oil, avoiding overcrowding the pan.

  3. Drain on a hot colander and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that hold the croquette shape and give a soft interior.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together when shaped and fried.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes in boiling oil, avoiding overcrowding the pan.. Oil that is hot enough sets the coating quickly and browns it, while crowding the pan drops the oil temperature, so croquettes absorb more oil and turn greasy and pale.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, milk, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, flour. 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.

More potato croquettes recipes

Sweet 58 See all 311 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipes