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Dessert

Croquettes of Fruit

Fruit croquettes are small fried cakes made from stewed fruit, crumbled biscuits, sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 513 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Croquettes of Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stone the fruit and place it in a jar with the sugar.

  2. Stew gently until tender.

Make the mixture

  1. Strain off the juice, then stir in the cake crumbs, lemon rind, and cinnamon.

  2. Gradually add juice until the mixture reaches the right consistency, then spread it on a dish to cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into cork-shaped pieces, coat with egg and breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until nicely browned.

  2. Serve garnished with strips of angelica.

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. Plum + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  3. Biscuit + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cooking cherries, damsons, or plums
Provides the fruit flavour and the juice that moistens and binds the mixture.
Savoy biscuits or genoese cake
Absorbs the fruit juice and gives the croquettes their bulk and soft, crumbly body.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps preserve it while it stews.
Eggs
Coat the shaped pieces so they brown and form a crisp outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Gradually add juice until the mixture reaches the right consistency. Too much juice makes the mixture too wet to hold its cork shape, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Adding the juice slowly lets the crumbs soak it up evenly, so the pieces hold together during coating and frying.

Swap the plum

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, egg, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, egg, bread. 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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