Skip to main content
Main

Beef Croquettes

Beef croquettes are fried meat balls coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Beef Croquettes

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a thick sauce.

  2. Gradually add the beef stock and lemon juice, seasoning with onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stir in the minced beef and one egg, cooking for five minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes, dip in the beaten egg, and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in boiling lard 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Minced beef
Provides the main filling and savory meaty flavor.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter into a sauce that binds the filling together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, softening the texture of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and form a coating that helps crumbs adhere.
Beef stock
Adds moisture and savory depth to the thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. A warm, loose filling is soft and sticky, so croquettes can break or slump in the crumbs. Cooling lets the flour-thickened sauce firm up so the mixture holds its shape during dipping and frying.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

More beef croquettes recipes

Corned 5Corn 3 See all 66 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes