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Beef Croquettes

Beef croquettes are small meatballs made from dressed beef, onions, flour, and seasonings, fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Beef Croquettes

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 ↓

Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and moisten with beef stock or gravy.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and parsley.

  5. Add the minced beef and cook until the sauce is dry.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls or rolls.

  2. Dip each ball into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Heat butter or lard in a frying pan.

  4. Gently place each ball in the pan, dust with flour, and roll to brown evenly.

  5. Once browned, drain on a cloth and serve on dressed parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the bulk of the croquettes, giving them a savory, meaty filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the onions and sauce, and helps the croquettes brown.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet when fried, adding depth of flavor to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the moistened onion mixture so the filling holds its shape.
Egg whites
Bind the coating so the flour dusting and frying form an even crust.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until the sauce is dry. If the filling stays wet, the balls will be soft and may break apart when shaped or fried. Cooking off the liquid lets the mixture firm up enough to hold its form.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, 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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