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Sweet Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from mashed sweet potatoes, egg, butter, and seasonings, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Mix the egg with the mashed sweet potatoes and add salt, parsley, butter, and pepper.

  3. Mix well and let cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into cylinders.

  2. Roll each cylinder in egg and then in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling fat 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.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sweet potato + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sweet potato + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 of the croquette filling.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cylinders hold their shape, and helps the coating adhere.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and softens its texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Warm filling is soft and sticky, so it can slump or tear when shaped and coated. Cooling lets the starch and fat firm up so the cylinders hold their form through frying.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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