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Crootettes of Cold Chicken

Crootettes of Cold Chicken are minced chicken rolls coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Crootettes of Cold Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the cold chicken very fine with a little suet.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped parsley, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Pound part of the mixture in a marble mortar to a paste, adding 1 tablespoon of well-beaten egg occasionally.

  4. Continue pounding more of the chicken mixture until all is done.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into oblong rolls.

  2. Dip the rolls into beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the rolls in hot oil until they are a fine 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Cold chicken
Forms the main body of the croquettes, giving them their bulk and savory flavor.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the minced chicken moist and helps it bind.
Egg
Binds the chicken mixture into a cohesive paste that holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Pounding the paste with egg. Adding the egg gradually while pounding lets it emulsify and bind evenly into the chicken. Adding it all at once can leave a loose, lumpy mixture that cracks or falls apart when shaped and fried.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, pepper, parsley, egg, flour, 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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