Skip to main content
Main

Meat Croquettes

A fried dish of ground meat mixed with bread crumbs, egg, and seasonings, formed into rolls and coated with cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Meat Croquettes

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Moisten bread crumbs with boiling water in a pan.

  2. Add the beaten egg and remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the ground meat, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into oblong rolls and coat with cornmeal.

  2. Fry the croquettes in deep oil 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.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the boiling water and bind with the meat to form a soft, shapeable mass.
Ground cooked meat
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the croquettes.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds its shape when formed and fried.
Cornmeal
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the croquettes in deep oil until golden brown. The oil must be hot enough to brown the cornmeal coating quickly; if it is too cool, the croquettes absorb oil and turn greasy before the outside crisps, and the interior may not heat through.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, egg, 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.

More meat croquettes recipes

Cold 9Australian 3 See all 60 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes