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Dessert

Peanut Croquettes

Peanut croquettes are fried, cone-shaped snacks made from bread crumbs, milk, peanuts, eggs, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Peanut Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine bread crumbs, cold milk, and chopped peanuts in a double boiler; stir over heat until smooth.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten yolks of 2 eggs.

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

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in egg and then in cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain on brown paper and serve with caramel or maple sugar 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Milk + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + peanuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the mixture and thicken it with the milk into a moldable paste.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and provide a coating that helps the cracker crumbs stick.
Chopped peanuts
Add nutty flavor and texture to the croquette filling.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is sticky and will not hold its cone shape. Cooling lets the starch in the crumbs and the cooked egg firm up, so the croquettes keep their form through the egg dip and frying.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Pecansfits better
  3. Cocoafits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, 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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