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Dessert

Nut Ceoquettes

A fried croquette made with walnuts, bread crumbs, rice, sugar, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 430 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Nut Ceoquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine chopped walnuts and toasted bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Mix in boiled rice, sugar, coarse sea salt, and beaten egg.

  3. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat 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. Walnut + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + ricetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,259 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Walnut + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together714 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

English walnuts
Provide the main body, nutty flavor, and a bit of crunch in the croquette.
Boiled rice
Adds bulk and a soft, starchy body that holds the mixture together.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold their shape while frying.
Toasted bread crumbs
Add toasted flavor and absorb moisture so the mixture can be shaped.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the croquettes absorb oil, turn greasy, and can fall apart before a crisp crust forms.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, rice, sugar, 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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