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Chicken or Veal Croquettes

A fried croquette made with chopped meat, rice, parsley, lemon and onion juice, bound with milk, butter, flour, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chicken or Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine milk, butter, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper in a double boiler, and cook until thick and smooth.

  2. Stir in chopped meat, cooked rice, parsley, lemon juice, and onion juice.

  3. Set aside to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into shapes.

  2. Roll each croquette in egg, then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep fat 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped meat
Provides the main filling and savory flavor of the croquettes.
Cooked rice
Bulks out the filling and adds body to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff binding paste that holds the croquettes together.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that is thickened into a binding sauce.
Egg
Coats the shapes so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before shaping. A warm, loose filling is soft and sticky, so the croquettes can lose their shape or split. Setting the mixture until it is cool and firm lets it hold its form through the egg and crumb coating and the hot frying oil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, rice, parsley, lemon, milk, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, rice, parsley, lemon, milk, butter, flour. 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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