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Beep Croquettes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Beep Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add chopped onions and fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in flour and moisten with stock or gravy, seasoning with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and parsley.

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

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls or rolls.

  2. Dip each into beaten egg white.

  3. Heat butter or lard in a frying pan.

  4. Gently place each ball in the pan, dusting with flour.

  5. Roll them gently to brown evenly.

  6. Once browned, 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

Dressed beef
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it its meaty filling.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet and savoury as they fry, adding flavour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the stock or gravy into a sauce that binds the filling together.
Egg white
Coats the shaped croquettes so they hold together and form a crisp outer layer when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the onions and browns the croquettes in the pan.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until the sauce is dry. A wet filling will not hold its shape when rolled and may fall apart or steam instead of frying. Cooking off the moisture firms the mixture so the croquettes keep their form and brown well.

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.

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