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Salmon Croquettes

A fried croquette made with boiled salmon, butter, flour, milk, spices, egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Salmon Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon mixture

  1. Mince the boiled salmon flesh.

  2. Melt butter in a saucepan, add a small amount of flour and hot milk.

  3. Stir on the fire for about a minute, then add pepper, salt, nutmeg, parsley, and the salmon.

  4. Shake well and remove from heat, then stir in the beaten egg and lemon juice.

  5. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool, then divide into tablespoonfuls and shape into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the balls in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in very hot lard for about an hour, serving 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a binding sauce that holds the salmon together.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and smoothness to the mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, beaten, creates a coating that helps the crumbs adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Hot milk
Forms the moist white sauce that carries the salmon and keeps the croquettes tender.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The mixture must cool and firm so the balls keep their shape; shaping it warm makes it soft and sticky, and it may fall apart in the hot lard.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

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