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Meat Croquettes

Meat croquettes are fried balls of seasoned beef or mutton mixed with breadcrumbs, flour, and spices.

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

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 ↓

Meat Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Chop the meat finely.

  2. Heat the butter in a saucepan and fry the onion until lightly browned.

  3. Add the flour and stock, and boil for 1 to 2 minutes.

  4. Stir in the meat, breadcrumbs, Worcestershire sauce, parsley, herbs, salt, and pepper, mixing well over the heat.

  5. Add more stock or water if the mixture appears dry.

Shape and fry

  1. Transfer to a plate and let cool, then divide into equal portions and form into balls.

  2. Coat each ball with egg and breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat until nicely browned.

  4. Alternatively, shape into round cakes, coat with flour, and fry in a little hot fat.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Beef or mutton
Provides the main body and savoury meaty flavour of the croquettes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the croquettes brown when fried.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a binding paste that holds the meat together.
Breadcrumbs
Add bulk and absorb moisture, and the outer coating crisps when fried.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to each ball.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A hot, soft mixture is too loose to hold its shape and can crack or fall apart in the fat. Cooling lets the starch in the flour and breadcrumbs firm up, so the balls keep their form while coating and frying.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, flour, sauce, pepper, egg. 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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