Skip to main content
Main

Walnut Croquettes

A fried croquette made with walnuts, rice or breadcrumbs, onion, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Corn and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Walnut Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the fat, adding corn starch, and gradually whisking in the milk.

  2. Stir in the chopped walnuts, rice or bread crumbs, minced onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette in egg and then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the croquettes in deep fat until golden brown.

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. Corn + ricetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Walnut + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Walnuts
Provide the bulk and nutty flavor that give the croquettes their body.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that binds the mixture together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding moisture and softness.
Bread crumbs
Coat the outside so the croquettes brown and crisp when fried.
Boiled rice or fat
Rice adds starchy bulk and moisture, while fat enriches the white sauce and adds richness.

The step that matters

Make a white sauce by melting the fat, adding corn starch, and gradually whisking in the milk.. Adding the milk gradually while whisking keeps the starch from clumping. The starch must fully thicken the sauce so the mixture holds its shape when shaped and fried.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, corn, rice, bread, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, corn, rice, bread, milk, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes