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Beef Croquettes

Beef croquettes are pan‑fried meatballs coated in breadcrumbs, served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef Croquettes

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 ↓

Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the cooked beef until you have 1 pint.

  2. Season the beef with salt, pepper, grated onion, and lemon juice.

  3. In a pan, mix butter and flour, then gradually add beef broth.

  4. Add the seasoned beef to the mixture and boil for 2 minutes.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg thoroughly and pour the mixture onto a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into croquettes, dip in egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes until golden brown and serve with tomato 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.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean cooked beef
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the croquettes.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the broth so the mixture holds its shape.
Beef broth
Adds moisture and savoury depth, thickened by the roux into a binder.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture and, as a coating, helps bread crumbs stick for browning.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The mixture must be cool and firm enough to hold its shape; shaping it warm makes it soft and sticky, so the croquettes can break apart or lose their form in the frying oil.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, lemon, butter, flour, egg, bread. 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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