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Egg Croquettes

Egg croquettes are small fried cakes made from boiled eggs mixed with beaten egg, parsley, mushrooms, and white sauce, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Egg Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the eggs in water just off the boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cold, remove the eggs from their shells.

  3. Chop the egg whites finely and sift the yolks.

  4. Mix the chopped whites and sifted yolks with the slightly beaten egg.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, parsley or chives, and add cooked mushrooms if desired.

  6. Combine the mixture with the heavy white sauce and set aside to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Mould the mixture into croquettes, then dip in breadcrumbs and the remaining beaten egg.

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with white sauce or add peas, small beans, mushrooms, or asparagus tips.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 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

Eggs
Provide the main filling, with the yolks sifted for a smooth texture and the whites chopped.
Heavy white sauce
Binds the chopped egg into a mixture that holds its shape when moulded.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture is soft and sticky, so the croquettes can fall apart or lose shape. Cooling lets the white sauce firm up so the croquettes hold together in the hot oil.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, mushroom, sauce):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, mushroom, sauce. 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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