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Artichoke Croquettes

Artichoke croquettes are fried, breaded balls made from cooked artichoke bottoms, butter, shallots, cream, egg yolks, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and shallot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Artichoke Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a flat saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the shallots lightly.

  2. Add the cream or Allemande sauce and reduce it slightly.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks, seasoning with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley.

  4. Add the artichoke pieces and bring to a gentle boil, then mix gently and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes, coat in bread crumbs, dip in beaten eggs, and coat in bread crumbs again.

  2. Fry in hot lard until golden brown and serve on a napkin, garnished with fried parsley.

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. Artichoke + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Artichoke + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together524 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms
Provide the main body and bulk of the croquette filling.
Cream or allemande sauce
Adds richness and moisture so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and set when heated, giving the croquettes structure.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour when it softens the shallots at the start.
Shallots
Add a mild aromatic sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. The mixture must be cool enough to hold its shape, because warm egg-enriched filling is soft and will slump or break when shaped and coated. Gentle mixing keeps the artichoke pieces intact.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, butter, cream, egg, pepper, nutmeg, parsley):

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, butter, cream, egg, pepper, nutmeg, parsley. 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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