Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Croquettes

Cheese croquettes are small fried balls made from grated cheeses, egg, paprika, salt, white sauce, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parmesan cheese and cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,041 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cheese Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the Parmesan cheese, American cheese, and slightly beaten egg in a bowl.

  2. Season with paprika and salt, then mix in the heavy white sauce.

  3. Once the mixture is cold, shape it into small croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in bread crumbs, then in egg, and coat again with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes 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. Parmesan cheese + cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,041 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parmesan cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parmesan cheese + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Parmesan cheese
Adds sharp, savory flavor and helps the mixture set firm.
American cheese
Melts smoothly and binds the mixture with a creamy texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the coating adhere.
Heavy white sauce
Provides moisture and body so the mixture holds its shape.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture before shaping. A warm mixture is soft and sticky, so croquettes can lose their shape or split. Cooling lets the starch and proteins firm up, making the mixture easier to shape and less likely to break apart when fried.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes