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Chicken Croquettes

Chicken croquettes made with milk, butter, flour, salt, pepper, onion, parsley, bread crumbs, cooked chicken, and egg, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan over medium heat until it boils.

  2. Add the butter and flour, stirring until thickened.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add salt, pepper, onion, parsley, bread crumbs, and chicken.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it into the other ingredients.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep 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.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the moist base that the flour thickens into a smooth white sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter so the mixture holds its shape.
Chicken
Provides the main filling and body of the croquettes.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the croquettes hold together while frying.
Bread crumbs
Add body to the filling and form a crisp, browned outer coating.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the other ingredients. A hot, thickened sauce can curdle or loosen the egg and make the mixture too soft to shape. Cooling it first keeps the mixture firm enough to form and fry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, walnut, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, walnut, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, 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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