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Croquettes of Cold or Preserved Meat

A fried croquette made from finely minced cold or preserved meat mixed with butter, onion, parsley, nutmeg, and flour, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Croquettes of Cold or Preserved Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop or mince the onion and meat very fine, removing skin and gristle.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and sauté the onion until golden brown.

  3. Add the minced meat and stir to warm through.

  4. Mix in the flour, then gradually add stock until desired consistency is reached.

  5. Season with pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and nutmeg.

  6. Set aside to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into cones, balls, or rolls using tablespoons.

  2. Beat the egg.

  3. Dip each shaped croquette into the beaten egg.

  4. Coat each croquette with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat dripping in a frying pan.

  2. Fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  3. Remove the croquettes from the pan and drain.

  4. Serve on a hot dish with brown gravy.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold or preserved meat
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their savoury flavour.
Butter
Fat that cooks the onion gently, adding richness and flavour to the filling.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma when browned in butter.
Flour
Thickens the stock so the mixture holds together when shaped.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to each croquette.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft filling is too loose to hold its shape and may split or slump in the pan. Cooling lets the flour-thickened mixture firm up so each croquette keeps its form through coating and frying.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, parsley, nutmeg, egg, pepper, flour. 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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