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Dessert

Croquettes of Apples

Apple croquettes are fried balls made from cooked apples, sherry, sugar, lemon and orange juice, mixed with egg yolks and coated in crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Croquettes of Apples

Ingredients

Directions

Make the apple base

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Put the sliced apples in a stewpan with sherry, sugar, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  3. Cook until reduced to a pulp.

  4. Beat the egg yolks.

  5. Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture.

  6. Cook for 5 more minutes.

  7. Pour the mixture out to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cold and firm, roll into balls.

  2. Dip the balls in egg white and fine crumbs.

  3. Fry the coated balls in butter.

  4. Drain and 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Form the main body of the filling as they cook down into a pulp.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken and set as it cooks down.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the mixture so it sets firm enough to roll into balls.
Sherry
Adds aromatic flavour as the liquid reduces with the apples.

The step that matters

Cooling until cold and firm before rolling. If the apple mixture is rolled while still warm, it stays soft and sticky and will not hold its shape. Chilling lets the cooked egg yolks and pectin in the apples set the mixture so the balls keep their form through coating and frying.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, sugar, lemon, orange, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, sugar, lemon, orange, egg, butter. 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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