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Plum Pudding Croquettes

Small croquettes made from plum pudding mixture, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the cloves and cinnamon in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the chopped fruit until the egg is slightly cooked.

  3. Set the mixture aside until very cold.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the chilled mixture into small croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette into the beaten egg.

  3. Roll each croquette in the fine dry crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in smoking hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve with either a hard or soft 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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Clove + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Raisin + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cinnamon + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,058 recipes

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

Cinnamon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,058 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

Eggs
Bind the fruit mixture and, once slightly cooked, help hold the croquettes together.
Chopped fruit
Provides sweetness, chewy texture and the main flavor of the croquettes.
Fine dry crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Set the mixture aside until very cold. A cold, firm mixture holds its shape when shaped and coated. If it is still soft, the croquettes can break or leak during frying.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, cinnamon, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Quincefits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, cinnamon, egg. 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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