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Chicken Croquettes

A fried dish of shredded chicken and sweetbreads mixed with cream, spices, and herbs, coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 filling

  1. Chop the chicken and sweetbreads very fine.

  2. In a saucepan, rub together the butter and flour until smooth. Stir in the boiling cream or milk and let it boil until thick.

  3. Add onion juice, salt, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and parsley. Mix the meat into the paste and stir well.

  4. Turn the mixture out to cool, then mold into shapes.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each croquette in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs. Fry in boiling lard 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. 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 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.
Sweetbreads
Adds soft, tender texture to the minced meat filling.
Cream or milk
Makes the thick white sauce that binds the meat into a cohesive mixture.
Butter
Fat that cooks with the flour to form a smooth, rich roux.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk into a paste that holds the filling together.
Egg
Coats the shapes so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool and firm before coating. A warm, soft filling cannot hold its shape and may split or burst during frying. Cooling lets the starch-thickened paste set so the croquettes keep their form.

Swap the onion

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

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

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