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Bean Croquettes

Bean croquettes made from mashed haricot beans, breadcrumbs, onion, egg, and spices, fried until golden.

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

Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mash the boiled haricot beans in a bowl.

  2. Add enough breadcrumbs to make a stiff mixture.

  3. Stir in the fried onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Shape the mixture into balls or flat cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in the beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  2. Heat oil in a pan and fry the croquettes until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with sauce or brown gravy, garnished with fried parsley.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beans + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the croquette and provide its soft, starchy filling.
Breadcrumbs
Stiffen the mashed beans so they hold their shape, and add a crisp outer coating.
Egg
Binds the coating so breadcrumbs stick to the croquettes.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour to the bean mixture.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Frying at a steady heat browns the breadcrumb coating through Maillard browning while the inside heats through. Too low and the croquettes absorb oil and turn greasy; too high and the outside burns before the centre is hot.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, 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.

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