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Egg Croquettes

Egg croquettes are fried balls of a mixture of butter, flour, milk, salt, paprika, egg whites, parsley, and egg yolk, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Egg Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Stir in the milk and cook until smooth.

  4. Add salt, paprika, egg whites, parsley, and onion juice if desired.

  5. Cool the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Take 2 tablespoons of the mixture and form a well.

  2. Place 1 teaspoon of the riced yolk in the center and fold the mixture over it.

  3. Dip the balls in egg and roll in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry in hot fat until golden brown and serve with cream 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor to the base mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the croquette shape.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks with the flour.
Hard cooked egg whites
Add body and substance to the mixture, giving the croquettes their filling.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose sauce cannot hold its shape and may slump or split when handled. Cooling lets the starch-thickened mixture firm up so the balls keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, bread. 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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