Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

Fried croquettes of cooked chicken mixed with a roux, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and cook for a minute, stirring constantly.

  3. Gradually add the cream or stock, stirring until smooth.

  4. Stir in the salt, cayenne, celery salt, and grated onion.

Shape and coat

  1. Chop the cooked meat and combine it with the mixture until well blended.

  2. Shape the mixture into croquettes about 2.5 inches long, round and flat at each end.

  3. Roll each croquette in bread crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in boiling fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with tomato 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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the butter and cream or stock into a binding base that holds the croquettes together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and helps the flour cook into a smooth roux.
Cream or white stock
Provides the liquid that, thickened with flour, makes a creamy binder for the meat.
Cooked chicken
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their meaty flavor and texture.
Eggs (in the method)
Beaten egg in the coating sets during frying and helps the bread crumbs adhere.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool and firm before shaping. A warm, loose base is too soft to hold its shape and can split or spill during coating and frying. Thickened starch sets as it cools, so the croquettes keep their form in hot fat.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, pepper, onion, chicken):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, pepper, onion, chicken. 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.

More chicken croquettes recipes

Mock 6Italian 4 See all 418 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes