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Chicken Croquettes

A fried chicken mixture formed into croquettes, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the cream or chicken stock.

  2. Mix the flour and butter together, then stir into the boiling cream.

  3. Add the chicken, salt, pepper, onion juice, and lemon juice.

  4. Boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in 2 beaten eggs.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in the remaining beaten egg.

  3. Coat with breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cooked chicken
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the croquettes their main flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a binding paste that holds the filling together when shaped.
Eggs
Bind the cooled filling and form a coating that helps breadcrumbs stick.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, improving flavour and browning.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. The filling must be cool and firm enough to shape; a warm, soft mixture will slump and break apart in the breadcrumbs and oil.

Swap the onion

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

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

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