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Nut Croquettes

Nut croquettes made with butter, flour, milk, cheese, pecans, rice or macaroni, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Nut Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Nut Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until well blended.

  3. Gradually add the milk and cook until thick.

Mix and shape

  1. Stir in the mustard, pepper, grated cheese, chopped pecans, and rice (or finely chopped macaroni).

  2. Spread the mixture on a plate and cool for several hours.

  3. Shape the cooled mixture into croquettes.

  4. Roll each croquette in fine bread crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in deep fat until golden brown, then drain on brown paper.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Rice + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together599 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the flavour and helps form the base sauce with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the flour into a thick, creamy binder.
Grated cheese
Adds richness and flavour, and helps bind the mixture as it sets.
Chopped pecans
Add crunch and nutty flavour to the filling.
Cooked rice or cooked macaroni
Adds bulk and body to the filling so it can be shaped.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture fully before shaping. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its shape and can crack or slump when coated and fried. Cooling for several hours lets the starch-thickened sauce set firmly enough to form croquettes.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cheese, rice, mustard, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cheese, rice, mustard, pepper. 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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