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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are small fried balls of chicken mixture coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and stir until smooth.

  2. Add the chicken stock, then mix in the chicken, bread crumbs, and remaining ingredients.

  3. Bring to a boil while stirring thoroughly, then remove from heat.

Shape and coat

  1. Once completely cool, shape the mixture into croquettes resembling small eggs.

  2. Roll each croquette in bread or cracker crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in boiling hot lard until golden brown, then lift out onto soft paper or cloth to absorb excess grease.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 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

Chopped chicken
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it its main flavor.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid in the filling and form a crisp outer coating when fried.
Chicken stock or gravy
Moistens the filling and adds savory flavor.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the stock into a binding base for the filling.
Beaten egg (in the method)
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before shaping. A warm filling is soft and sticky, so the croquettes can slump or split. Once cooled and set, the mixture holds its shape and the coating stays intact in the hot fat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, bread, pepper, butter, flour, onion):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Mangofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, bread, pepper, butter, flour, onion. 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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