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Dessert

Chicken Croquettes

A fried chicken croquette made with a sweet milk sauce, flour, butter, and seasoned with salt and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 white sauce

  1. Boil the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the flour with a little cold milk to make a thin paste.

  3. Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk and cook until thickened.

  4. Add the butter, salt, and cayenne pepper, stirring well.

Shape and coat

  1. Combine the mixture with the chopped chicken and mix thoroughly.

  2. Form the mixture into small croquettes using your hands.

  3. Dip each croquette first into the beaten egg, then roll in the fine crackers.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot tallow or a mixture of half tallow and half 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and gives them their savory, meaty flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that binds the chicken together.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing moisture and a creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, softening texture and carrying flavor.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the cracker crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.
Fine rolled crackers
Form a crunchy outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cook the flour paste until thickened. Flour must be fully cooked in the hot milk to thicken properly; undercooked starch leaves a raw, pasty taste and a sauce too loose to hold the croquettes together.

“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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