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Croquettes of Fowl

Small balls of shredded cooked chicken bound in a thickened sauce, coated in bread crumbs and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Croquettes of Fowl

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove the bones from the chicken and cut the meat into very small pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Stir in the flour, parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg; cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the mushrooms and cook for another 5 minutes.

  5. Pour in the warm broth and boil gently until thickened.

  6. Stir in the chicken and cook for 2-3 minutes, then remove from heat.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Dust the balls with bread crumbs, dip in beaten eggs, and fry in butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with fried parsley or mushrooms.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main protein and bulk that the croquettes are built around.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and browns the outside when the croquettes are fried.
Flour
Thickens the warm broth into a binding paste that holds the filling together.
Warm broth
Supplies the liquid that cooks with the flour into a thick, moist filling.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs stick and set into a crisp shell.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot filling is soft and sticky, so it will not hold its shape. As it cools, the thickened starch firms up, making the balls easier to form and less likely to break apart in the fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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