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Meat Croquette

A creamy meat mixture thickened with butter and flour, formed into croquettes and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Meat Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald the milk and cream in a double boiler.

  2. Rub together the butter and flour, then gradually stir this into the scalding milk until thickened.

  3. Add the cayenne, black pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg, then return to heat for 1 minute to cook the egg.

Shape and serve

  1. Add the chopped chicken or meat and mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a flat dish and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, mold into croquettes using about 1 tablespoon of mixture for each.

  4. Serve with cream, tomato, or brown 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 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

Milk and cream
Form the smooth liquid base that thickens into a creamy binder for the meat.
Flour
Thickens the scalded milk and cream so the mixture holds together when shaped.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat, binding the mixture so the croquettes keep their shape.
Chicken or other meat
Provides the main filling, giving the croquettes their savory body and bulk.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg into the base. Stirring the beaten egg off the heat and then returning it briefly to heat lets it set gently. Overheating can curdle the egg and make the mixture grainy.

Swap the onion

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

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

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