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Nut Croquettes

Nut croquettes are small balls of walnut, bread crumbs, milk, and egg, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Nut Croquettes

Why it works: Walnut and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Nut Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Heat the butter and olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until slightly brown.

  3. Add the bread crumbs, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stir in the milk, mixing constantly, and remove from heat.

  5. Add the nuts and the beaten egg, mixing thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls of desired size or shape.

  2. Dip the balls in batter and roll them in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the balls in hot olive oil until golden.

  4. Peel and cut bananas into thirds or apples into eighths.

  5. Dip the fruit in batter and fry it in the same oil.

  6. Arrange the croquettes on a hot platter with the fried fruit around the edge.

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. Walnut + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Olive + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Walnut + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnut meats
Provide the main body, richness and nutty flavor of the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk and absorb the milk to form a firm, shapeable mixture.
Milk
Moistens the mixture and helps bind the bread crumbs into a soft paste.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Whole wheat flour
Thickens the butter and oil base so the milk turns the mixture creamy.

The step that matters

Frying the balls in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb grease and turn soggy before a golden crust forms. Oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre heats through, so keep the heat steady.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, butter, olive, wheat, flour):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, olive, wheat, 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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