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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are breaded chicken patties coated in a creamy sauce, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a double boiler until warm.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  3. Add the flour, salt, white pepper, celery salt, and cayenne to the butter.

  4. Gradually stir in the hot milk, mixing constantly until smooth.

  5. Allow the sauce to boil before adding more milk.

Shape and coat

  1. Chop the chicken finely.

  2. Mix the chopped chicken with the sauce until it is soft enough to handle.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a platter to cool.

  4. Shape the cooled mixture into croquettes.

  5. Roll the croquettes in sifted bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in deep fat until golden 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that binds the chicken together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the flour cook into a smooth roux.
Milk
Supplies liquid that, with the flour, forms a smooth, creamy binding sauce.
Cream
Adds extra fat and richness, giving the sauce a softer, silkier mouthfeel.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when the croquettes are fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. The starch-thickened sauce firms as it cools and binds the chicken. If the mixture is still warm and soft, the croquettes will not hold their shape and may break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, lemon, cream, milk, butter, flour. 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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