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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes are fried balls of seasoned minced chicken mixed with a cream sauce and coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Boil the chickens until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and mince it finely, discarding fat and gristle.

  3. Season the minced chicken with red and black pepper, salt, nutmeg, parsley, and minced onion.

Make the binding sauce

  1. In a saucepan, beat together the butter and flour.

  2. Heat the cream or milk almost to boiling, then stir in the butter and flour mixture, allowing it to boil.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the seasoned chicken.

Shape and fry

  1. Let the mixture cool, then form it into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette first in seasoned bread crumbs, then in beaten eggs, and again in the crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until light 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 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

Chickens
Provides the cooked meat that forms the body of the croquettes.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and flavor to the croquettes.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cream mixture so the chicken can be bound together.
Cream or rich milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and a smooth texture.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crust.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. The sauce must cool and firm up enough to hold its shape; shaping it warm leads to soft croquettes that slump and break apart during coating and frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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