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Chicken and Sweet-bread Croquettes

A fried croquette made with chopped chicken and sweetbreads bound in a cream and flour custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken and Sweet-bread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the binder

  1. Boil the cream with flour, butter, salt, pepper, and onion in a saucepan for a few minutes, then remove the mixture from heat.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and let the mixture cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Add the chopped chicken and sweetbreads and mix gently.

  2. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  3. Roll the croquettes in cracker crumbs, dip them in egg, then roll them in cracker crumbs again.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in boiling lard 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help the coating adhere and set when cooked.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream into a stable sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling soft inside the coating.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the cream base.
Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty texture and flavour of the filling.
Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling, adding substance and flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose binder is too soft to hold its shape. Cooling lets the starch and egg firm up so the croquettes keep their form and do not split or fall apart in the hot lard.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, flour, butter, pepper, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, flour, butter, pepper, 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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