Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

A fried ball of minced chicken, ham, mushrooms, and seasonings coated in breadcrumbs.

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

Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove skin and bone from the chicken and finely mince it with the mushrooms and ham.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the cornflour and cook briefly.

  3. Add the minced meat, seasoning, and white sauce to the saucepan, then mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then form it into balls.

Fry and serve

  1. Brush the balls with egg, dip them in breadcrumbs, and fry in hot lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve with white sauce.

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. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Chicken
Forms the main body of the croquettes, giving them their savoury meat filling.
Cornflour
Thickens the butter and sauce mixture so the filling holds its shape when cooled.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and add richness and moisture, helping it set when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the roux that starts the filling.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before forming the balls. A warm, soft filling is too loose to shape and may burst or collapse in the hot lard. Cooling lets the starch and egg set the mixture firmly enough to hold its form.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, mushroom, egg, butter, sauce, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, mushroom, egg, butter, sauce, pepper. 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 chicken croquettes recipes

Mock 6Italian 4 See all 418 →

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes