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Chicken Croquettes

A fried patty of cream, butter, bread crumbs, cooked chicken, onion or parsley, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the cream or milk until boiling.

  2. Add the creamed butter and flour, stirring until it thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Mix in the chicken, minced onion or parsley, and beaten eggs last.

Shape and fry

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into small, round, flat cakes.

  2. Dip each cake in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in a mixture of lard and butter until light brown.

  4. Remove and place on brown paper to absorb excess grease.

Serve

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

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

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

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

  3. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  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

Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened sauce is built on, giving the croquettes moisture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid with butter into a binding sauce that holds the chicken together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, when dipped, form a coating that helps the bread crumbs stick.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling, giving the croquettes bulk and savory flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture is too soft to hold its shape and can break apart during dipping and frying. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up so the cakes stay intact.

Swap the onion

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

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

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