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Celery Croquettes

A savory dish of cooked celery mixed with butter, flour, milk, and egg yolks, formed into croquettes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Celery Croquettes

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Celery Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the celery

  1. Trim and wash the celery, then cut it into short pieces.

  2. Blanch the celery in salted water, then drain.

  3. Cook the celery in well-seasoned stock until tender, then drain and chop finely.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the chopped shallot, and fry for a minute.

  2. Stir in the flour, then gradually add the milk, stirring until it boils.

  3. Add the chopped celery, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the egg yolks at the end, then spread the mixture on a dish and let it cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes (cork or ball shapes), coat with egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown, then drain on a cloth or paper and serve.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Celery + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Celery
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and gives them their main flavour and body.
Butter
Enriches the filling and carries the shallot flavour during the initial frying.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the celery together.
Milk
Liquid that turns the flour and butter into a smooth, thick base.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set firm once cooled and cooked.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. Spreading the mixture to cool lets it firm up; shaping it while warm makes it too soft to hold its form and it may burst or slump in the hot fat.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, shallot, milk, pepper, egg, 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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