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Bean Croquettes

A fried dish of mashed haricot beans mixed with breadcrumbs, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bean Croquettes

Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the cold boiled haricot beans in a bowl.

  2. Add enough breadcrumbs to make a stiff mixture.

  3. Stir in the chopped onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Form the mixture into flat cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cake into milk, then coat with flour.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, about 5 minutes.

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. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the croquettes and give them a soft, starchy interior.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture so the mixture holds together as a stiff, shapeable mass.
Milk
Helps the flour adhere to each cake, forming a base for browning.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that helps the outside brown and crisp when fried.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the bean mixture.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coated cakes absorb grease and turn soggy before the surface browns. Hot oil sets the coating quickly, so the outside browns while the inside heats through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, flour, milk. 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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