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Croquettes of Cold Meat

Croquettes of Cold Meat are pastry-wrapped meat patties fried until golden.

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

Croquettes of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute, then gradually add the stock to make a smooth sauce.

  3. Mix the chopped meat, parsley or mushrooms, and seasoning into the sauce until well combined.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a plate and let it cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Roll out the short crust pastry thinly and cut into circles with a pastry cutter.

  2. Place a small amount of the meat mixture in the center of each circle, wet the edges with water, and fold over.

  3. Press the edges together firmly and trim if necessary.

  4. Dip each croquette in the beaten egg, then coat with fine bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a pan and fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  2. Drain on kitchen paper and serve on a plate with fried parsley in the center.

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. 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce that binds the meat filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries the flour's flavour.
Stock
Liquid that turns the flour and butter into a sauce and adds savoury flavour.
Cold meat
Provides the main filling, held together by the thickened sauce.
Short crust pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky outer shell that encloses the filling.
Egg
Beaten egg acts as a glue so the bread crumbs stick and brown during frying.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before shaping. A hot or loose filling softens the pastry, makes it hard to seal, and can burst or leak during frying. Chilling it firms the sauce so the croquettes hold their shape.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, butter, pepper, egg, 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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