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Meat Croquettes

A savory dish of meat-filled croquettes coated in crumbs and fried.

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

Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Make a drawn gravy by melting butter and whisking in flour until thick and smooth.

  2. Add hot water as needed to achieve desired consistency.

  3. Season the gravy with lemon juice, pepper, salt, and thyme or onion juice.

  4. Mix the seasoned gravy with the chopped meat.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Roll each croquette in cracker crumbs, then dip in beaten egg, and roll in crumbs again.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot lard for 1.5 minutes until golden brown.

  2. Drain on brown paper before serving.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped meat
Forms the body and savory flavor of the croquette filling.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat, adding richness and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a gravy that binds the meat together.
Egg
Coats the croquettes so the cracker crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browning outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. Fat must be hot enough to crisp the coating quickly. If the oil is too cool, the croquettes absorb grease and the crumbs turn soggy before the interior is heated through.

“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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