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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken served with bacon, herbs, mushrooms, and rice croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the chicken

  1. Lard the chicken breast with bacon and cover with thin slices of bacon.

  2. In a saucepan, place the sliced onion, carrot, sweet herbs, and bay leaf at the bottom.

  3. Lay the chicken on top and pour in 1½ pints of stock or water; simmer slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove the chicken and place it in a roasting pan with some of the liquid; roast in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes, basting occasionally.

  5. Simmer the mushrooms in the chicken cooking liquid for 10 minutes, then remove and arrange around the chicken.

  6. Boil the remaining liquid until reduced to ¾ pint, remove the fat, add glaze, season, and strain through a fine sieve.

  7. Pour some sauce around the chicken and serve the rest in a tureen.

Make the rice croquettes

  1. While the chicken is cooking, wash the rice and boil it in ½ pint of stock until tender, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Stir in the Parmesan cheese, then turn the rice out onto a plate to cool and firm up.

  3. Form the cooled rice into pear shapes, brush with beaten egg, and roll in bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the croquettes in hot fat until light brown, drain, and insert a small piece of parsley into the thin end of each.

Serve

  1. Arrange the croquettes around the chicken along with the mushrooms.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Chicken + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + parmesan cheesetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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

Rice
Starch that cooks tender and, once cooled, holds its shape for forming.
Egg
Beaten egg coats the shaped rice so the bread crumbs adhere and brown.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and firms the rice mixture as it cools.
Bacon
Fat that bastes the chicken and adds savoury, smoky flavour.
Glaze
Concentrated meat flavour that deepens the colour and taste of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooling the rice before forming. Rice must cool and firm up before shaping; if warm, it stays soft and sticky and will not hold the pear shape or survive frying.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, onion, pepper, mushroom, egg, rice, parmesan cheese):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, onion, pepper, mushroom, egg, rice, parmesan cheese. 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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