Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

A fried croquette made from shredded chicken, butter, flour, spices, and broth, coated in egg and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the chicken meat finely and set aside.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until bubbling. Stir in the flour, salt, black pepper, and grated nutmeg until well combined.

  3. Add the chicken broth and mix until smooth.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes using your hands.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  3. Place the croquettes in a cool area to harden.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in boiling lard until light 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken meat
Provides the main body and bulk of the croquette filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a mixture that holds its shape.
Chicken broth
Moistens the filling and binds it into a smooth, pliable mixture.
Egg
Binds the coating so the crumbs stick to the croquette.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Chilling the croquettes to harden. The filling is soft when shaped. Cooling it firm before frying helps the croquettes hold their shape and keeps the coating from breaking open in hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, egg. 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 chicken croquettes recipes

Mock 6Italian 4 See all 418 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes