Skip to main content
Main

Beep Croquettes

Beef croquettes are small meatballs made from minced beef, onions, flour, and seasonings, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Beep Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a large stew pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions and fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in the flour and moisten with the stock or gravy.

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

  5. Add the minced beef and cook until the sauce is dry.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls or rolls.

  2. Dip each into the beaten egg whites.

  3. Heat butter or lard in a frying pan.

  4. Gently place each ball in the pan, dust with flour, and roll to brown evenly.

Serve

  1. Drain on a cloth and serve on dressed 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.

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced cooked beef
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it its savoury, meaty flavour.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, adding depth to the filling.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce that binds the filling together.
Beef stock or gravy
Moistens the flour and adds beefy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Egg whites
Form a coating that helps the crumb-like flour dusting stick and brown.
Butter
Adds richness and promotes even browning in the frying pan.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until the sauce is dry. If the mixture stays wet, the croquettes will be too soft to hold their shape and may break or steam rather than brown in the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg. 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 beef croquettes recipes

Corned 5Corn 3 See all 66 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes