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Lamb Croquettes with Green Peas

Lamb croquettes served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Lamb Croquettes with Green Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine minced lamb, onion juice, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.

  2. Moisten the mixture with cream sauce and shape into croquettes.

Bread and fry

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

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas on the side or with your choice of meat sauce.

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

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

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

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked lamb
Forms the main body and flavour of the croquettes.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture so the mixture holds together when shaped.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere to the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the croquettes absorb grease and the coating turns soggy before the centre is heated through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, cream, sauce, egg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, cream, sauce, 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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