Skip to main content
Main

Beef or Lamb Croquettes

A fried croquette made from minced beef or lamb mixed with Worcestershire sauce, onion, parsley, salt, pepper, cayenne, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Beef or Lamb Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the beef dripping and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the brown stock to the roux, stirring until smooth to create a brown sauce.

Form and fry

  1. Add Worcestershire sauce, grated onion, chopped parsley, coarse sea salt, pepper, and cayenne to the minced meat.

  2. Combine the meat mixture with the brown sauce and mix well.

  3. Shape the mixture into croquettes and fry 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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked beef or lamb
Forms the main body and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the stock with the dripping into a roux that binds the mixture.
Brown stock
Makes the sauce that moistens the meat and helps hold the croquettes together.
Beef dripping
Fat that cooks the roux and adds rich flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Combining the meat with the brown sauce. The sauce must be smooth and fully cooled enough to hold the meat together; if it is too hot or too thin, the mixture will be too loose to shape and may split or slump during frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, parsley, beef, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, parsley, beef, flour, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes