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Beef Croquettes

Beef croquettes are small balls of minced beef coated in beaten egg white and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Beef Croquettes

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 ↓

Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a stew pan over medium heat.

  2. Add chopped onions and fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in flour and moisten with stock or gravy.

  4. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and parsley.

  5. Add minced beef and let stew until the sauce is dry.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls or rolls.

  2. Dip each into beaten egg white.

  3. Heat butter or lard in a frying pan.

  4. Gently place each ball in the pan, dust with flour, and roll to brown evenly.

  5. Once browned, drain on a cloth and serve on dressed parsley.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked beef
Forms the bulk of the croquette and gives its savory, meaty flavor.
Onions
Caramelize when fried pale brown, adding sweetness and savory depth to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the stock or gravy into a binding sauce that holds the minced beef together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the croquettes brown in the pan.
Egg white
Forms a coating that helps the outside set and hold together during frying.

The step that matters

Let the filling stew until dry. If the sauce is still wet, the mixture will be too soft to shape and may crack or fall apart in the hot fat. Cooking off the moisture firms the filling so the balls hold their shape.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg. 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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