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Beef Croquettes

Beef croquettes are small meatballs made from finely minced beef, onions, flour, and seasonings, then fried until browned.

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.

  2. Add chopped onions and fry until pale brown.

  3. Stir in flour.

  4. Moisten with stock or gravy.

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

  6. Add minced beef.

  7. Let it 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.

  5. Dust each ball with flour.

  6. Roll them gently to brown evenly.

  7. Once browned, drain on a cloth.

Serve

  1. 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

Dressed beef
Forms the bulk of the croquettes and gives them their meaty body and flavour.
Onions
Fried until pale brown, they add sweetness and savoury depth to the filling.
Flour
Stirred into the butter and onions, it thickens the stock so the filling holds together.
Stock or gravy
Moistens the filling and carries flavour through the beef mixture as it stews.
Beaten egg white
Coats the shaped balls so the outer layer sets and helps the crust brown.
Butter or lard
Fat for frying that browns the outside and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Let it stew until the sauce is dry. If the filling stays wet, the croquettes will be too soft to shape and may split or fall apart in the hot fat. Reducing the sauce until thick lets the mixture hold its form.

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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