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Ham Croquettes with Green Peas

Ham croquettes made with minced ham, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, mace, brown sauce, and egg, served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham Croquettes with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine minced ham, bread crumbs, butter, pepper, mace, and brown sauce.

  2. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with additional bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with a border of green peas.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Ham
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body, and form a crisp outer coating.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the mixture stay tender.
Egg
Binds the coating so the crumbs adhere during frying.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and savory depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes until golden brown. Frying at a steady heat browns the bread crumb coating and sets the egg, so the outside turns crisp while the filling heats through. Too low a heat soaks the coating with oil; too high browns it before the filling is warm.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, bread, butter, pepper, sauce, egg, peas):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, bread, butter, pepper, sauce, egg, peas. 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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