Skip to main content
Main

Fowl Croquettes

A fried croquette made with diced cold roast fowl, parsley, mushrooms, and a creamy sauce, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fowl Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped parsley and mushrooms to the butter.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and let simmer for a moment.

  5. Pour in the stock and cream, and let the sauce simmer uncovered to thicken.

  6. Add the diced cold roast fowl to the sauce and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  2. Take a spoonful of the mixture and roll it into a ball.

  3. Dip the ball into the bread crumbs, then into the beaten egg.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in butter or lard until golden brown.

  2. Continue until all the mixture is used up, then serve hot.

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives the balls a golden, rich frying crust.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, helping it set around the fowl.
Stock
Gives the sauce its savoury liquid base and helps it thicken with the flour.
Cold roast fowl
Forms the main filling, which the thickened sauce binds together.
Egg yolks
Bind and set the crumb coating so it sticks to the balls and browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the sauce simmer uncovered to thicken. Flour only thickens fully once it has simmered long enough to cook out its raw taste and swell the starch. If the sauce stays thin, the mixture will not hold its shape when rolled and coated.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, flour, pepper, cream, 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.

More chicken croquettes recipes

Mock 6Italian 4 See all 418 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes