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Sweet Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from mashed sweet potatoes, egg, and seasonings, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Mix the egg with the mashed sweet potatoes and add salt, parsley, butter, and pepper.

  3. Once cooled, form the mixture into cylinders.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each cylinder first in egg and then in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling oil 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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  4. Sweet potato + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Sweet potato + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 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

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the croquette and give a soft, moist interior with natural sweetness.
Egg
Binds the mashed mixture so it holds its cylinder shape, and the coating egg helps crumbs stick.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed potato mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Hot mashed sweet potato is soft and loose, so it is hard to shape. Cooling lets the starch and egg set slightly, so the cylinders keep their form in the hot oil.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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