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Croquettes De Mouton

A French dish of mutton croquettes made with boiled mutton, macaroni, milk, and curry, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Croquettes De Mouton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Boil a shoulder of mutton until tender, adding seasonings like carrot and onion.

  2. Cut the cooked mutton into 2‑inch dice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, rub together the flour and butter, then add the boiling broth from the mutton.

  2. Stir and boil for 2 minutes.

  3. Add curry powder, salt, and pepper to the sauce.

  4. Mix the mutton into the sauce and simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll the mixture into croquettes and fry in boiling lard.

  2. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped parsley on top.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Mutton
Provides the main savoury body and flavour of the croquette filling.
Macaroni
Adds bulk and a starchy body that helps the mixture hold together.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth into a sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps form the flour roux for the sauce.

The step that matters

Rolling and frying the croquettes. The mixture must be firm and well chilled enough to hold its shape; if it is too soft it can break apart in the hot lard.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cardamomfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, milk, pepper, flour, butter. 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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