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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes made from finely chopped cold fowl, salted, peppered, mixed with butter, eggs, and optional onion, then coated in crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the finely cut cold fowl with coarse sea salt, black pepper, butter, and onion if desired.

  2. Stir in the 2 fresh eggs until well mixed.

  3. Form the mixture into cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cake in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the cakes in boiling lard, a mix of lard and butter, or Ko‑nut 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Cold fowl
Provides the main body of the croquettes as the bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the chopped fowl so the cakes hold their shape when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and aids browning.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the cakes are fried.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in boiling fat. The fat must be hot enough to set the egg and crumb coating quickly, so the crust browns and seals before the cake can break apart or absorb excess oil.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, 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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