Skip to main content
Main

Potato Croquettes

A fried dish of mashed potato shaped into croquettes, coated in egg and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the mashed potatoes with salt, pepper, and butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and cracker crumbs; mix well.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then shape it into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll in cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot lard 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, moist interior of the croquette.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the shape together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, making the potato mixture creamy and tender.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating that helps the croquettes hold together.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the crust brown during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is sticky and falls apart when shaped. Cooling firms the starches and fat so the croquettes hold their form through breading and frying.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg. 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.

More potato croquettes recipes

Sweet 58 See all 311 →

You might also like

Potato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesPotato BiscuitPotato Biscuit32 recipesPotato SnowPotato Snow23 recipes