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Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of chicken mixed with a creamy sauce and spices, formed into croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk and cream, stirring until thickened.

  3. Add salt, white pepper, celery salt, and cayenne to the sauce.

Shape and fry

  1. Chop the chicken finely and mix it with the sauce until soft enough to handle.

  2. Cool the mixture, then shape it into croquettes.

  3. 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and filling of the croquettes.
Butter
Fat that forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a sauce that holds the mixture together.
Milk
Liquid that, with the cream, turns the roux into a thick sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is hard to shape and can slump or split when fried. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce so the croquettes hold their form.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, lemon, cream, butter, milk, 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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