Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are fried balls of minced chicken, ham, and butter coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Remove the skin from the chicken and mince it finely with the ham or bacon.

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

  3. Stir in the flour to make a smooth paste, then add the veal broth and cook until it boils and thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the cream, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  5. Mix in the minced chicken and ham until well combined.

  6. Transfer the mixture to a plate and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the chicken mixture into balls with floured hands.

  2. Beat the egg lightly in a bowl.

  3. Dip the balls in the egg and roll them in bread crumbs to coat.

  4. Arrange the croquettes in a frying basket without touching each other.

Fry and serve

  1. Melt the lard in a deep frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Fry the croquettes in the hot lard until pale yellow.

  3. Drain on paper before serving.

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

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + vealtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Butter
Enriches the flavour and helps form the smooth base paste.
Flour
Thickens the veal broth into a paste that holds the filling together.
Veal broth
Adds liquid and savoury depth that thickens with the flour.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to the balls.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer layer when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft filling is too loose to hold its shape, so the balls may split or leak in the hot lard. Cooling firms the starch-thickened paste, making it easier to form and coat evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, butter, flour, veal, cream, bread):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, butter, flour, veal, cream, bread. 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 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes