Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes made from finely chopped boiled chicken mixed with butter, flour, cream, and seasonings, then shaped, coated, and fried.

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

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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chicken until tender, then bone and chop it very fine.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until well combined.

  3. Add enough water from boiling the chicken to make a very thick sauce.

  4. Stir in seasoning, parsley, salt, pepper, nutmeg, cream, and the chopped chicken.

  5. Mix well and set aside in a cool place to harden.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling lard or drippings until golden brown.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their main flavour.
Butter
Enriches the flour base and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and boiling water into a sauce that binds the filling.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling tender and creamy.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the cracker crumbs adhere and form a crust.

The step that matters

Make the sauce very thick before adding the chicken. A thick, well-cooked flour and butter base binds the filling. If it is thin, the mixture stays loose and the croquettes may fall apart when shaped or fried.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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