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Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of finely chopped chicken mixed with ham, breadcrumbs, spices, and lemon juice, formed into rolls and deep‑fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine chicken, ham, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, mustard, mace, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat the mixture with enough stock or gravy to moisten it (water is acceptable).

  3. Add the beaten egg and stir for one minute.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into rolls about 1 inch in diameter and 4 inches long, rolling on a board sprinkled with bread crumbs.

  2. Roll each croquette in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs again.

Fry

  1. Carefully lift the croquettes into a frying basket and plunge them into very 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Chicken + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,192 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their savoury flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture, and help form a crisp coating for browning.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and forms a coating that sets and browns when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Cooling firms the moist mixture so the rolls hold their shape. Shaping it warm can make it slump and crack, and the coating can then slide off during frying.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, bread, pepper, mustard, lemon, egg):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, bread, pepper, mustard, lemon, egg. 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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