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Chicken or Veal Croquettes

A fried patty made from veal or chicken mixed with stock, flour, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken or Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the stock or milk.

  2. Blend 1 teaspoon of flour with 3 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Add the blended mixture to the boiling stock.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes.

  5. Add 2 well-beaten eggs.

  6. Stir in the salt, pepper, lemon juice, onion juice, and chopped meat. Mix well.

  7. Remove from heat.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cooled, shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll the croquettes in breadcrumbs.

  3. Dip the croquettes in beaten eggs.

  4. Roll the croquettes in breadcrumbs again.

Fry

  1. Fry 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Chopped veal or chicken
Forms the bulk of the croquette and provides the main savoury flavour.
Butter and flour
Cooked together into a roux that thickens the stock into a binding base.
Eggs
Bind the mixture as they set, holding the croquettes together while frying.
Stock or milk
Forms the liquid that the roux thickens into a smooth, moist binding.

The step that matters

Cooling before shaping. The mixture must cool and firm up before shaping; if it is still warm and soft it will not hold its form and may collapse or stick during breading and frying.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, milk, flour, lemon, egg, butter. 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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