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Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from mashed potatoes mixed with butter, spices, and egg, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes, butter, white pepper, and celery salt, excluding the egg, until very light.

  2. When slightly cool, add the yolk of the egg and mix well.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into rolls and roll them in fine bread crumbs.

  2. Dip the rolls in the beaten egg white, then roll in crumbs again.

Fry

  1. Fry in smoking hot lard for one minute.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, starchy body that the croquettes are shaped from.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender interior.
Egg
Yolk binds the mixture; white helps the bread crumbs adhere to the rolls.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in smoking hot lard. The fat must be very hot so the crumb coating crisps and browns quickly before the potato interior overheats and the coating absorbs excess grease. Oil that is not hot enough produces greasy, pale croquettes.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, white pepper, celery, egg, 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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