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Chicken Croquettes

A fried patty of chicken, almonds, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Blend the butter and flour in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chicken stock, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  3. Cook the mixture until thickened.

Shape the croquettes

  1. Mix the chicken and chopped almonds in a bowl.

  2. Moisten the chicken mixture with the sauce.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  5. Coat the croquettes with breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  2. Serve with horseradish sauce.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the roux that starts the sauce.
Chicken stock
Provides the liquid that turns the roux into a thickened sauce.
Chicken
Forms the main filling that the sauce moistens and holds together.
Chopped almonds
Adds crunch and nutty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. The filling must be cool and firm enough to shape. If it is still warm and loose, the croquettes will slump and may break open in the hot fat.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Cashew nutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Black-eyed peafits about as well

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