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Maccaroni and Cheese Croquettes

A fried ball of macaroni, milk, butter, flour, cream, cheese, eggs, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Maccaroni and Cheese Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Wash the macaroni and boil it in water for five minutes.

  2. Strain the water.

  3. Add the milk and cook for about 45 minutes.

Make the cheese mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour.

  2. Add the macaroni cut into small pieces, cream, cheese, egg yolks, and seasoning. Stir over the heat for a few minutes.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Form the mixture into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the balls in egg whites and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil for two minutes.

  3. Drain on paper.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  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

Macaroni
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving the croquettes body and chew.
Butter
Enriches the sauce base and adds richness and flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that holds the filling together.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and melts into the sauce for a creamy filling.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and bind the filling; whites help the bread crumbs adhere.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose filling will not hold its shape and may burst or leak in hot oil. Letting it cool and firm up lets the starch set so the balls keep their form while frying.

“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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