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Shad Roe Croquettes

Shad roe croquettes are small fried cakes made from shad roe, milk, butter, flour, eggs, lemon and onion juice, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shad Roe Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Drop the roe into a saucepan of boiling salted water, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain carefully, remove the thin membrane, and break up the roe with a fork.

Make the mixture

  1. In a double boiler, scald the milk, then add the butter and flour mixed into a paste, stirring until smooth and thick.

  2. Add the prepared roe and the beaten egg yolks, stir briefly, and remove from heat.

  3. Mix in the lemon juice, onion juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Turn the mixture onto a greased platter and let it cool.

Shape, fry and serve

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into small croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette into beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roe
Forms the main body and rich flavor of the croquettes.
Milk
Combined with butter and flour to form a thick, smooth binding base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a paste that holds the croquette mixture together.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the mixture and help it set as it cools.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the thickened base.

The step that matters

Cooking and cooling the mixture before shaping. The mixture must be thick and fully cooled so it holds its shape. Stirring the yolks in only briefly, off the heat, avoids scrambling them and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, milk, butter, flour, egg, lemon, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, milk, butter, flour, egg, lemon, 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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