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Chicken Croquetts

Chicken croquettes are fried, pear-shaped pieces of seasoned chicken mixed with a butter and breadcrumb paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Chicken Croquetts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chicken, then remove the meat and chop it finely.

  2. In a pan, combine bread crumbs, butter, and a little water; cook until mushy and let cool.

  3. Mix the chicken with nutmeg, pepper, salt, onion, parsley, and mace.

  4. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and mix them with the chicken and panada.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into pear-like forms.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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 savoury flavour of the croquette filling.
Bread crumbs
Cooked into a panada that binds the filling and keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the panada and adding flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the filling so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Cook the bread crumb panada until mushy. The panada must be cooked fully so it absorbs the butter and water and becomes a smooth paste. Under-cooked panada stays grainy and weakens the binding, so the shaped croquettes may crack or fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, nutmeg, pepper, onion, parsley. 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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