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Chicken Croquettes

A fried chicken patty coated in breadcrumbs, served with celery or cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chicken Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Pour in the milk and stir constantly until it boils and thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the chicken, parsley, onion juice, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  5. Let the mixture cool, then shape it into croquettes.

Coat and fry

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

  2. Fry in deep hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Drain and serve alone or with Celery Sauce or Cream Sauce.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the milk with the butter into a smooth sauce that binds the chicken.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into a creamy binding sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps form the smooth starting roux.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling, bulk and savory flavor of the croquettes.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A thick, warm base is too soft to hold its shape, so it must cool and firm up before shaping, or the croquettes may fall apart in the hot oil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, parsley, milk, butter, nutmeg, flour, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, parsley, milk, butter, nutmeg, flour, 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.

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