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Croquettes of Shad-roe

A dish of croquettes made from shad roe, potatoes, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Croquettes of Shad-roe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Boil the shad roes in water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the shad roes and place them in a bowl.

  3. Separate the roes with a wooden spoon.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and chopped parsley to the roes.

  5. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve into the bowl.

  6. Add the boiled potatoes to the mixture.

  7. Add the chopped whites of the hard-boiled eggs and lemon juice to the mixture.

Make the binding sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Gradually add the cold water until the mixture boils.

  4. Pour the hot mixture over the ingredients in the bowl.

  5. Stir the mixture thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small croquettes.

  2. Dip the croquettes in the beaten raw egg.

  3. Roll the croquettes in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the croquettes in hot clarified fat or lard for 2 minutes.

  5. Drain the croquettes on kitchen paper.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roes
Provide the main flesh and flavour of the croquettes.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, helping the mixture hold together and stay moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and softening the texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a paste that binds the mixture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the mixture; chopped whites add body.
Raw egg
Beaten egg coating helps the bread crumbs stick and brown in frying.

The step that matters

Pour the hot mixture over the ingredients in the bowl.. The flour-and-water paste must be boiling so the starch gelatinises and thickens. Adding it hot lets it bind the roe and potato evenly, while a cool paste would leave the mixture loose and hard to shape.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, lemon, 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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