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Croquettes of Fowls

A savory pastry made from a butter‑flour dough filled with a seasoned fowl mixture and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Croquettes of Fowls

8 squares

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with cold water and stir into the flour to form a stiff paste.

  3. Knead the paste until smooth.

  4. Roll the dough out twice.

  5. Let the dough rest in a cool place for 5-6 hours.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the cold fowl into small pieces, discarding the skin.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the bones and trimmings of the fowl, garlic, and water; stew to make gravy.

  3. Pound the fowl into a paste.

  4. Mix in the pounded ham or tongue and seasonings.

  5. Add enough gravy to moisten the mixture.

  6. Pound until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the paste to ⅛ inch thick.

  2. Cut the dough into 8 equal squares.

  3. Brush each square with cold water.

  4. Place a portion of the meat mixture in the center of each square.

  5. Fold the paste over the filling and press the edges to seal.

  6. Fry the croquettes in boiling lard or clarified dripping until golden brown, about 10 minutes.

  7. Drain the croquettes on a sieve.

  8. Serve on a folded napkin, optionally garnished 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.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Garlic + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,893 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that encloses the filling and holds its shape when fried.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and tenderness to the pastry.
Egg yolks
Bind the flour and water into a stiff paste and add richness to the dough.
Cold fowl
Forms the main meat filling, pounded into a paste with the gravy.
Lard or clarified dripping
Fat for frying that browns the outside of the croquettes.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to crisp and brown the pastry quickly; if it is too cool, the croquettes absorb grease and turn heavy and soggy. Fat that is too hot can brown the outside before the filling heats through.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, garlic, ham, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, garlic, ham, nutmeg, lemon. 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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