Skip to main content
Main

Potato Croquettes

A fried dish of mashed potato shaped into balls, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato 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 ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato base

  1. Rub the cold or freshly cooked potatoes through a sieve onto a plate.

  2. Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan until hot.

  3. Stir in the sifted potatoes.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  5. Mix in the yolks of 2 eggs, chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.

  6. Let the mixture cool completely.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into balls or croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg.

  3. Coat each croquette with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the croquettes in boiling fat until golden brown.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the croquette, giving a soft, starchy interior that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the potato mixture and improving its flavour.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the mixture, and the beaten egg helps bread crumbs adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely. A warm, soft potato mixture is too loose to shape and will spill or burst in the hot fat. Cooling lets the starch firm up so the croquettes hold their form.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, egg, parsley, bread, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg, parsley, bread, 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.

More potato croquettes recipes

Sweet 58 See all 311 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes