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Egg Croquettes

Egg croquettes are small fried cakes made from a mixture of eggs, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Egg Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Place the eggs in a saucepan and cover them with cold water.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour.

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a separate pot.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour to form a paste.

  3. Add the paste to the scalded milk and stir slowly until thickened.

  4. Cover the mixture and cook for 5 minutes.

  5. Season with salt, paprika, cayenne, onion juice, and mace.

  6. Remove the mixture from heat.

  7. Stir in the chopped parsley and diced hard-boiled eggs.

  8. Spread the mixture on a buttered dish and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Dust your hands with flour and shape the mixture into small croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll it in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot fat until golden brown.

  4. Drain the croquettes on unglazed paper.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Eggs
Provide structure when hard-boiled and set, and richness in the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens into the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the flour paste that thickens the milk.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a firm mixture that holds its shape when cooled.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before shaping. A warm, soft custard is too loose to hold its shape and can break apart or leak in the hot fat. Cooling lets the starch set so the croquettes keep their form while frying.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, butter, flour, onion, parsley, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, butter, flour, onion, parsley, 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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