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Mushroom Croquettes

Mushroom croquettes are fried balls of sautéed mushrooms mixed with breadcrumbs, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Mushroom Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the mushrooms into dice.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan and cook the mushrooms until soft.

  3. While warm, mix in enough bread-crumbs to form a stiff paste.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and grated nutmeg.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then mold into balls the size of chestnuts.

Coat and fry

  1. For a savory variation, add chopped ham, bacon, or cooked game.

  2. Roll the croquettes in beaten egg and then in bread-crumbs for coating.

  3. Fry until golden brown and serve garnished with fried parsley or croutons.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flap mushrooms
Provide the main body of the filling and its earthy flavor once softened in butter.
Butter
Softens the mushrooms and adds richness to the filling.
Bread-crumbs
Bind the warm mushrooms into a stiff paste that holds its shape when molded.
Eggs
Coat the balls so the crumb crust sticks and browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before molding. Warm filling is soft and sticky, so shaping it too early makes it hard to form balls. Cooling lets the crumbs absorb moisture and firm the paste so the croquettes hold their shape in the coating and frying.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, bread, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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