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Mock Chicken Croquettes

A fried patty made from rye bread, walnuts, butter, onion, mace, milk, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Mock Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix chopped rye bread and walnuts together.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon butter, grated onion, and ground mace, and mix again.

  3. Melt 1½ tablespoons butter in a saucepan, add ½ tablespoon flour and stir, then gradually stir in 1 cup milk.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the bread mixture, salt, and pepper.

  5. Stir in beaten eggs, remove from heat, and add lemon juice.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Form into cylinders.

  2. Dip croquettes in egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling fat.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Rye + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together31 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye bread
Provides bulk and body that the filling holds together.
Walnuts
Add chewy texture and a nutty bite to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that binds the filling.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that flour thickens, keeping the filling moist.
Eggs
Set when stirred into the hot mixture, helping bind the croquettes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Cooling firms the starch-thickened filling so the cylinders hold their shape and do not slump or split when coated and dropped into hot fat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, bread, walnut, butter, onion, flour, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, bread, walnut, butter, onion, flour, 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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