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Croquettes

Croquettes are fried meat cakes made with a flour‑butter milk sauce, chopped meat, beaten egg, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, rub together the flour and butter to make a cream sauce.

  2. Thin the mixture with hot milk and stir over heat until it thickens.

  3. Add the chopped meat and mix well.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into pear-like forms.

  2. Moisten each croquette with beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Let them cool slightly, then roll again in egg and crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in very hot lard until light brown, ensuring they do not stay in the lard longer than necessary.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 milk into a cream sauce that holds the meat together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cream sauce base.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it heats and sets the mixture.
Chopped cooked meat
Supplies the filling, bound into the thickened sauce.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binding coat so the bread crumbs adhere to the croquettes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb grease and turn soggy, while lingering too long makes the crumb coating dark and the interior dry. Quick frying at high heat seals the crust and keeps the filling moist.

“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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