Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

A fried patty made from boiled chicken, mashed potatoes, eggs, mustard, celery, and butter, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Moisten the chopped chicken with the boiling liquid until it forms a thick pulp.

  2. Mix in the mashed potatoes, eggs, mustard, celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Soften the mixture with milk until very soft, then add the butter.

Shape and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into shapes, dip in egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling lard 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.

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. Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the croquettes.
Mashed potatoes
Add bulk and softness, helping the mixture hold together while staying tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when molded and fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender interior.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Soften the mixture with milk until very soft. The mixture must be soft enough to mold but firm enough to hold its shape. Too much milk makes it slack and likely to break apart in the hot lard, while too little leaves it stiff and dry. Chilling the shaped croquettes before frying helps them keep their form.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, potato, egg, pepper, celery, milk, butter. 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 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes