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Chicken Croquettes

A fried ball of chicken mixed with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings, coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chicken base

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and add milk slowly until it thickens into a thick gravy.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir in the cold chicken and cook for 1 minute.

  5. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and let it cool for several hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Dip each ball into beaten egg, then roll in cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry in very hot lard 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a gravy that holds the chicken together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and helps carry flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid that the flour thickens into a binding gravy.
Cold chicken
Provides the main filling, bound by the gravy into a shapeable mixture.
Egg
Coats the balls so the cracker crumbs stick before frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is too loose to roll into balls. Chilling firms the starch-thickened gravy so the croquettes hold their shape in the hot lard.

“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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