Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of finely chopped chicken and veal mixed with bread, spices, and eggs.

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

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the chicken and veal separately in cold water, just enough to cover them.

  2. Pick the meat from the bones and chop it finely.

  3. Soak the bread in the warm chicken broth.

Shape and fry

  1. In a chopping bowl, combine the chopped meat, soaked bread, salt, pepper, mace, nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

  2. Form the mixture into oblong balls.

  3. Fry the balls in equal parts lard and butter until 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape when fried.
Bread
Soaked in broth, it adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Veal
Provides the main body of the filling, giving it a tender, meaty texture.
Chicken
Supplies the meat and broth that moisten and flavor the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and promotes browning in the frying fat.

The step that matters

Frying until brown. The balls are cooked through during boiling and mixing, so frying is for color and crust. Frying in hot fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, while low heat leaves them pale and greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes