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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes made with finely chopped chicken, bread crumbs, butter, eggs, cream, and seasonings, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a saucepan, combine bread crumbs, water, butter, eggs, cream, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Place the saucepan in another pot of boiling water and cook, stirring constantly, until the eggs are set.

  3. Once the mixture cools, stir in the chicken and lemon juice.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes, dip in egg, then coat with cracker meal.

  2. Fry in hot lard 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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Cooked until set, they bind the mixture and give the croquettes structure.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing flavour and a tender texture.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the croquette interior soft.
Chicken
Provides the main filling and savoury flavour of the croquettes.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs until set in the double boiler. Stirring constantly over gentle, indirect heat keeps the eggs from scrambling or curdling, so the mixture thickens smoothly and binds properly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, butter, egg, cream, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, butter, egg, cream, pepper, nutmeg. 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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