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Bean Croquettes

Bean croquettes are fried cakes made from mashed haricot beans, breadcrumbs, onion, milk, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bean Croquettes

Why it works: Beans and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bean Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the cold boiled haricot beans in a bowl.

  2. Add enough breadcrumbs to make a stiff mixture.

  3. Stir in the chopped onion, salt, and pepper.

  4. Form the mixture into flat cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cake into milk, then coat with flour.

  2. Heat oil in a pan and fry the cakes until golden brown, about 5 minutes.

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.

  1. Beans + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

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

  2. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Beans + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haricot beans
Form the bulk of the cakes and provide the main body and texture.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mashed beans into a stiff mixture that holds its shape.
Milk
Helps the flour coating adhere to the cakes before frying.
All-purpose flour
Forms a thin dry crust that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Frying the coated cakes. The oil must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb oil and turn greasy before they turn golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beans, pepper, milk, flour):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beans, pepper, milk, 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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