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Preserve

Croquettes

A fried meat patty coated in a thickened milk and flour mixture, seasoned with onion, spices, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a double boiler, scald the milk or cream.

  2. Rub the butter and flour together until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter‑flour mixture into the scalding milk until thickened.

  4. Add onion juice, salt, pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, and stir well.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg, then return to heat for 1 minute without boiling.

Chill and shape

  1. Add the minced meat and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a flat dish and refrigerate for 2 hours to stiffen.

  3. Once stiffened, mold into croquettes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, stiff base that holds the croquettes together.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat, binding the mixture so it firms up when chilled.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a creamy binder.
Minced meat
Provides the main filling, bound into the thickened base.

The step that matters

Return to heat without boiling. After the egg is stirred in, boiling can scramble the egg and make the mixture grainy, so it should only warm for the stated minute to set gently.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg, nutmeg, meat. 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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