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Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of chicken and veal mixed with bread and spices, formed into oblong balls and coated in crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the chicken and veal separately in cold water, just enough to cover them.

  2. Pick the meat into pieces and chop finely.

  3. Soak the stale bread in the warm chicken broth.

Make the croquettes

  1. Combine the chopped chicken, veal, and soaked bread, and season with salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and mix them with the meat mixture.

  3. Form the mixture into oblong balls.

  4. Roll the balls in egg and then in cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in equal parts butter and lard until 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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main savoury meat flavour and the bulk of the croquette filling.
Veal
Adds tender body and a mild flavour to the filling alongside the chicken.
Stale bread
Soaks up broth and binds the meat so the mixture holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the meat mixture and set during cooking to hold the croquettes together.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Frying the croquettes until brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly; if it is too cool, the croquettes absorb grease and turn soggy before the coating crisps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, veal, bread, pepper, nutmeg, 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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