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Bean Croquettes

Bean croquettes are fried balls made from mashed beans, onion, bread crumbs, and egg or flour mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bean Croquettes

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mash the boiled beans in a bowl.

  2. Add chopped onion, salt, and pepper to the beans.

  3. Mix in enough bread crumbs to form a stiff paste.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into balls or cakes.

  2. Dip in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs, or dip in milk and then in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil or butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot with sauce or brown gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  3. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled beans
Form the main body of the croquettes and provide most of the texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture so the mixture holds together as a stiff paste.
Egg
Binds the mixture and forms a coating that browns when fried.
Onion
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the bean mixture.

The step that matters

Forming a stiff paste. If the mixture is too wet, the croquettes will fall apart in the hot oil. Adding bread crumbs gradually until the paste holds its shape helps the shapes stay intact while frying.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Peasfits about as well
  2. Beansthe original
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Sesamefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, egg, butter, pepper. 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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