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Meat Croquettes

A fried patty of butter, flour, milk, chopped meat, egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Meat Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  4. Season to taste, then mix in the chopped meat.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes 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.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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
Combines with melted butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a binding base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens with the roux into a creamy, moldable mixture.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the flour and adds richness to the base.
Chopped meat
Forms the filling that gives the croquettes their savory body.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring until the mixture thickens. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the starch in the roux dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth rather than lumpy. The mixture must be thick enough to hold its shape when formed into croquettes.

“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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