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Cblcfcen Croquettes

A savory croquette made with minced chicken, ham, and a creamy stock base.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cblcfcen Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Mix in the flour, cayenne, and salt until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the stock and cook until it leaves the sides of the saucepan.

Mix and shape

  1. Remove from heat and mix in the minced chicken, ham, cream, and lemon juice.

  2. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool.

  3. Shape into balls or corks, then coat with egg and breadcrumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling fat until light golden brown.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

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

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Chicken + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,092 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the stock into a binding base.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour while forming the roux with the flour.
White stock
Liquid that gelatinises with the roux into a thick panada to hold the filling together.
Minced chicken
Provides the main protein and body of the filling.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to keep the filling soft.

The step that matters

Cooking the stock into the flour and butter. The mixture must be cooked until it pulls away from the pan so the starch fully gelatinises. An undercooked base stays runny and will not hold its shape when shaped and fried.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cream, chicken, ham):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, chicken, ham. 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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