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Chicken Croquettes

A dish of minced chicken and sweetbreads coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chicken and brains or sweetbreads until cooked, then mince very fine.

  2. Add salt and cayenne pepper to the minced mixture.

  3. In a saucepan, combine cream, butter, flour, parsley, and onion juice; bring to a boil to make a sauce.

  4. Pour the sauce over the minced chicken and sweetbreads, then refrigerate until cold.

Shape and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into shapes, dip in beaten eggs, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Chicken
Forms the main minced body of the croquettes, giving the filling its bulk and savory flavor.
Cream
Combined with butter and flour into a sauce that moistens the minced filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smoother texture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter into a sauce that binds the minced meat together.
Eggs
Beaten eggs act as a coating that helps the bread crumbs adhere and brown when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture until cold. The sauce must be fully cold so the mixture firms up enough to hold its shape. If it is still warm, the croquettes can slump or burst when coated and fried.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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