Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Croquettes

A fried snack made from ground eggplant, onions, rice, mashed potatoes, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the eggplant and onions using a vegetable grinder.

  2. Pass the boiled rice and mashed potatoes through a sieve.

Shape and fry

  1. Mix the ground vegetables with the rice, potatoes, salt, sage, celery salt, and eggs until thoroughly combined.

  2. Shape the mixture as desired.

  3. Fry the croquettes in cottonseed oil until 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Sage + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Eggplant + cottonseedtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape when fried.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and a soft, tender interior to the croquettes.
Mashed potatoes
Add starch and moisture that help the mixture hold together while shaping.
Onions
Add savoury flavour and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes in cottonseed oil until golden brown. The mixture is soft and bound only by egg and starch, so it can break apart or absorb oil if the oil is not hot enough or the pieces are overcrowded. Frying until golden brown sets the outside into a crisp crust that holds the shape.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, eggplant, rice, potato, egg, celery, cottonseed):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, eggplant, rice, potato, egg, celery, cottonseed. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes