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Chicken or Veal Croquettes

A fried patty of boiled chicken or veal mixed with milk, onion, flour, eggs, butter, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 or Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk with the onion, then strain the milk.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour over low heat.

  3. Remove from heat and add eggs, butter, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and herbs.

  4. Mix this with the chopped meat and let it cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into oval patties.

  2. Dip each patty in egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the patties 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Chicken or veal
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Eggs
Bind the filling and, as an egg coating, help the crumbs brown and adhere.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the flour thickens into a binding sauce.

The step that matters

Cool the filling completely before shaping. A warm, soft filling is too loose to hold its oval shape and may split or burst in hot lard. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce so the patties keep their form while frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, milk, flour, egg, butter, pepper, nutmeg. 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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