Skip to main content
Main

Cheese Croquettes

Cheese croquettes are small fried balls made from cheese, bread crumbs, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mix the cheese and bread crumbs well.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Add the egg white and mix until combined.

  4. Form the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball into the beaten egg yolk, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil until light brown.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain on blotting paper and serve.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Provides rich flavor and fat, and softens to help bind the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Egg
Binds the mixture, and the beaten yolk helps the crumbs adhere and brown.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil. Oil must be hot so the coating sets quickly and seals the ball. In cool oil the crumbs absorb grease, the croquettes turn heavy and oily, and they can fall apart.

“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