Name: Croquettes
Ingredients: cooked rice; rich white sauce; minced fowl, partridge, or pheasant; stewed oysters; egg; bread crumbs; coarse sea salt; parsley for garnish; Parmesan cheese (optional)

Why it works: Rice and parmesan cheese work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 879 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare cooked rice and let it cool completely.
Stir in a few spoons of rich white sauce when the rice is nearly tender.
Form and hollow the rice into croquettes, filling them with minced meat or cut oysters.
Seal the rice around the filling, then dip in egg and coat with bread crumbs.
Fry the croquettes until lightly browned, then raise the pan to heat them through.
Serve garnished with crisped 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Rice + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together879 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,762 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Rice + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,259 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,545 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, sauce, pheasant, oyster, egg, bread, parmesan cheese):

Capersfits better
Nutmegfits about as well
Celeryfits about as well
Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sauce, pheasant, oyster, egg, bread, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.