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Chicken Croquettes

A fried mixture of chopped boiled chicken, brains, suet, and seasonings formed into croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the boiled chickens and brains very fine.

  2. Mix the chopped meat with suet, parsley, nutmeg, onion, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Season with salt, black pepper, and red pepper to taste.

  4. Add cream until the mixture is moist enough to mold.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll in pounded cracker or bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in 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.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled chickens
Provides the main body of the filling.
Brains
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender.
Cream
Adds moisture so the mixture can be shaped without crumbling.
Beaten egg
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres to the croquette and browns.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Add cream until the mixture is moist enough to mold. Too little cream leaves the mixture crumbly and hard to shape, while too much makes it soft and likely to fall apart in the hot lard. The mixture should hold together when pressed.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, cream, egg. 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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