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Macaroni Croquettes

Macaroni croquettes are fried balls of macaroni mixed with milk, butter, flour, cheese, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Macaroni Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Break the macaroni into pieces about 2 inches long.

  2. Boil the macaroni in a kettle of nearly full boiling water for 25 minutes.

  3. Drain the macaroni in a colander and cut it into pieces ½ inch long.

Make the sauce base

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Rub the butter and flour together until smooth, then stir into the boiling milk.

  3. Stir continually until the mixture thickens, then add the cheese and macaroni, along with salt and pepper.

  4. Cook for 1 minute longer, then turn out onto a plate to cool.

Form and fry

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette first in egg, then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in deep hot fat until golden brown.

  4. Serve with cream sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Macaroni
Provides the bulk and chewy body that holds the croquette together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a binding sauce.
Flour
Thickens the hot milk into a paste that sets firm as it cools.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the mixture bind as it cools.

The step that matters

Stir continually until the mixture thickens. Flour must be cooked in hot liquid while stirring to swell its starch and thicken evenly. Under-stirred or lumpy starch leaves a runny or grainy base, so the croquettes will not hold their shape when formed and fried.

“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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