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Lamb Croquettes

A fried croquette made with cooked lamb, rice, parsley, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamb Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

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

  3. Add the scalded cream to the butter and flour mixture, stirring until it thickens.

Shape the croquettes

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the lamb, rice, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Combine the meat mixture with the thickened cream and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, form the mixture into cone-shaped croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in hot oil 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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked lamb
Provides the main filling and meaty flavor of the croquettes.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and body to the filling, helping it hold its shape.
Flour
Thickens the cream with butter into a sauce that binds the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the filling soft and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and, with flour, forms the thickened base.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. The sauce must cool and firm up enough to hold a cone shape. Shaping a warm, loose mixture makes croquettes that slump and break apart in the hot oil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, rice, flour, parsley, cream, butter, pepper. 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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