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Beef or Lamb Croquettes

A fried croquette made from minced beef or lamb mixed with onion, parsley, Worcestershire sauce, spices, and brown stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 filling

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

  2. In a saucepan, make a brown sauce with the beef dripping, flour, additional salt, pepper, cayenne, and brown stock.

  3. Combine the sauce with the seasoned meat and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes and fry 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. Beef + oniontop 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
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the croquettes.
Beef dripping
Adds fat for richness and helps the croquettes brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the brown sauce so it binds the meat into a shapeable mixture.
Brown stock
Liquid that turns the flour into a sauce and moistens the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the brown sauce. Flour must be cooked smoothly into the dripping and stock so the sauce thickens without lumps. A sauce that is too thin will not bind the meat, and the croquettes may fall apart when shaped or fried.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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