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Chicken Croquette

A fried chicken patty coated in breadcrumbs, made with chopped chicken, spices, cream, and a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped chicken, salt, cayenne, black pepper, lemon juice, celery salt, and onion juice.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, add the flour, and stir to make a roux.

  3. Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring until thickened.

  4. Mix in the chicken and let it cool.

  5. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in seasoned breadcrumbs, then in the beaten egg mixed with water, and again in breadcrumbs.

  2. Heat oil in a pan and fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling and protein that gives the croquettes their body.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the cream into a binding sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, thickened into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the breadcrumbs adhere and set into a crisp shell.
Seasoned breadcrumbs
Form a golden, crunchy outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before shaping. A warm, loose filling is soft and sticky, so it will break or slump in the breadcrumbs and oil. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up so the croquettes hold their shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, pepper, lemon, celery, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, lemon, celery, cream, butter, flour. 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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