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Meat Croquettes

Small fried meat and potato rolls coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Meat Croquettes

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 ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat finely.

  2. Mix the chopped meat with the mashed potatoes, dripping, salt, and pepper.

  3. Form the mixture into small rolls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each roll in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the rolls in boiling lard until golden brown.

  3. Fry the parsley for garnish.

Serve

  1. Serve with or without 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the savory body of the croquette filling.
Potatoes
Add bulk and a soft, moist texture to the filling.
Dripping
Adds fat for richness and moisture in the filling.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere to the rolls.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry the rolls in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before the centre heats through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, parsley, pepper, 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.

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