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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are fried rolls of chicken and sauce coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stir the butter and flour to form a paste.

  2. Heat the milk to boiling.

  3. Stir the paste into the boiling milk and add the salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  4. Cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

Form the croquettes

  1. Remove from heat and mix in the egg, chicken, lemon juice, and onion juice.

  2. Spread the mixture on a platter to cool.

  3. Once cool enough to handle, shape the mixture into rolls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each croquette in bread crumbs.

  2. Dip the croquettes in beaten egg.

  3. Roll the croquettes in crumbs again.

  4. Fry the croquettes in hot fat for 1 minute until golden brown.

  5. Drain the croquettes well.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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

Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the chicken together.
Butter
Enriches the flavour and, with flour, forms the paste that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce that holds the croquette mixture together.
Egg
Adds structure to the mixture and, beaten, forms a coating that helps crumbs stick.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling and protein of the croquettes.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The thickened mixture must cool and firm up enough to hold its shape; shaping it while warm makes it soft and sticky, so the croquettes may fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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