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Meat Croquettes

A fried dish of ground meat formed into croquettes, coated in egg and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Meat Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add onion juice, flour, salt, and milk.

  2. Stir until smooth and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the ground meat, then let cool on a flat dish.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into croquettes and let them rest for about an hour.

  2. Roll each croquette in egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in deep, boiling 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth binding sauce that holds the meat together.
Milk
Forms the moist, creamy base that the flour thickens.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and helps it stay smooth.
Ground meat
Provides the main filling, set firm by the cooled white sauce.
Egg
Binds the coating so the cracker crumbs adhere and set during frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture fully before shaping. A warm, loose base is too soft to hold its shape and can split or slump during coating and frying. Chilling firms the starch-thickened sauce so the croquettes keep their form.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, nutmeg, meat, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, nutmeg, meat, pepper. 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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