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Macaroni and Spaghetti Croquettes

A fried croquette made from broken macaroni or spaghetti mixed with cheese, paprika, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,896 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Macaroni and Spaghetti Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pasta

  1. Plunge the broken pasta into boiling salted water and cook until tender.

  2. Drain and cool the pasta, then cut it into small rings.

Make the croquettes

  1. In a bowl, mix the pasta with cheese, paprika, and just enough heavy white sauce to hold it together.

  2. When cool, mold the mixture into croquettes.

  3. Dip each croquette in breadcrumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry until golden brown and serve with your choice of sauce.

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. Cheese + tomatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,896 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + tomatotop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni or spaghetti
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives it a firm, chewy body when cooked until tender.
Heavy white sauce
Binds the pasta together so the mixture holds its shape when molded.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the croquettes bind and brown slightly when fried.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the breadcrumbs adhere and form a crisp outer shell.

The step that matters

Let the pasta cool before molding. Warm pasta and sauce are soft and sticky, so they can slump or tear when shaped. Cooling firms the mixture so the croquettes keep their form through breading and frying.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, sauce, egg):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Welsh onionfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, sauce, 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.

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