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Croquettes

A fried patty of seasoned meat mixed with onions, broth, and eggs, coated in flour and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add chopped onion and fry until slightly browned.

  3. Stir in flour and cook until it browns.

  4. Add the chopped meat, salt, and pepper, then pour in the broth.

  5. Simmer the mixture off the heat, stirring continuously.

  6. Mix in chopped parsley and then quickly stir in the beaten eggs.

  7. Remove from heat and let cool for about 10 minutes.

Shape and fry

  1. Dust a clean surface with flour, take a lump of the mixture the size of an egg, and roll it in flour.

  2. Dip the rolled mixture in beaten egg, drain, and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Heat boiling suet or drippings in a frying pan and fry the croquettes for a couple of minutes until 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.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the croquettes together.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a stiff paste that holds the filling together.
Butter
Fat that cooks the onion and flour, adding richness and flavour.
Broth
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, thickened by the flour into a binding paste.
Cold cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving the croquettes their main flavour and body.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before shaping. Beaten eggs stirred into a hot mixture can scramble, and a warm filling is too soft to roll. Cooling firms the paste so the croquettes hold their shape and the coating stays intact during frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, veal, pepper, parsley, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, veal, pepper, parsley, egg, bread. 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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