Skip to main content
Main

Mutton or Lamb Croquettes

A fried croquette made with finely chopped meat, white sauce, capers, rice, lemon juice, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton or Lamb Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the meat, white sauce, capers, rice, lemon juice, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Chill the mixture until cold.

Shape and coat

  1. Take a full tablespoon of the mixture and shape it into a cylinder.

  2. Roll the croquette in bread crumbs.

  3. Dip the croquette in a beaten egg mixed with 1 tablespoon of cold water, ensuring it is fully coated.

  4. Roll the croquette again in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together121 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquette its main flavor.
White sauce
Binds the filling together and keeps it moist.
Cooked rice
Adds body to the filling and helps it hold its shape.
Egg
Forms a coating that helps the bread crumbs stick and seals the croquette.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture until cold. A cold, firm mixture holds its cylinder shape when rolled and coated. A warm, soft filling can slump or burst in the hot oil.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, capers, rice, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, capers, rice, pepper, egg, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes