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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Sweet potato croquettes with oysters, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in lard and served with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the croquettes

  1. Mash desired amount of sweet potatoes with the can of oysters, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add 1 egg and mix well.

  3. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  4. Roll each croquette in egg and then in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in deep lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine oyster liquor, butter, and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Add stock, salt, and pepper to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour 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

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, moist body of the croquette filling.
Oysters
Supply the main savory, briny flavor of the filling.
Egg
Binds the mashed filling and forms the coating that helps crumbs stick.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating during frying.
Flour
Thickens the oyster liquor and butter into a sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavor and smoothness.

The step that matters

Boiling the flour mixture before adding stock. Flour thickens liquid only when its starch is hydrated and heated enough to swell. Bringing the butter, liquor, and flour to a boil cooks out raw flour taste and sets the thickening before stock is added.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, egg, bread, butter, flour. 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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