Name: Potato Croquettes
Ingredients: 2 lbs potatoes; 1 oz butter; 1 tablespoon milk; 3 eggs; a small bunch of parsley; bread crumbs; pepper; coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Wash, scrub, and boil or steam the potatoes until tender.
Place a wire sieve over a plate.
Rub the hot potatoes through the sieve onto the plate using a wooden spoon.
In a saucepan, heat the butter and milk until hot.
Stir the sifted potato into the hot butter and milk until smooth.
Remove the saucepan from heat and let it cool on a paper.
Break the eggs, reserving the whites, and stir the yolks into the potato mixture one at a time.
Chop the parsley finely and add it to the potato mixture.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.
Transfer the potato mixture to a plate and let it cool completely.
Heat 1 lb of clarified dripping in a deep saucepan, being careful not to burn it.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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 (potato, butter, milk, egg, bread, pepper):

Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Cinnamonfits less well
Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, egg, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.