Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Sweet potato croquettes are fried balls made from mashed sweet potatoes, butter, cream, eggs, and coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mashed sweet potatoes and butter, then heat until smoking hot.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the cream and egg yolks.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then form it into croquettes.

Coat and chill

  1. Roll each croquette in the beaten egg and then in cracker crumbs.

  2. Place the croquettes on a platter and refrigerate for several hours.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot fat 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.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sweet potato + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture that give the croquettes a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs adhere to the croquettes.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Chilling the coated croquettes. Refrigerating the shaped croquettes for several hours firms the mixture and sets the egg coating, so they hold their shape and do not fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRoasted Sweet PotatoesRoasted Sweet Potatoes62 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes