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Pork Croquettes

A fried pork croquette made with a buttery pork mixture, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Pork Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a small saucepan and add the onion.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes without browning.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes.

  4. Add the broth or boiling water and beef extract.

  5. Stir in the salt, white pepper, dry English mustard, and chopped pork, then cook for 10 minutes.

  6. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks and parsley.

  7. Transfer the mixture to a flat dish and cool it.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the cooled mixture into 12 cork-shaped croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll it in fresh-grated bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in hot fat until golden brown.

  4. Serve with tomato, béchamel, or tartar 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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 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

Pork
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped pork into a filling that holds its shape.
Flour
Thickens the broth so the mixture becomes firm enough to shape.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating when the croquettes are fried.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. The filling must be cold and firm to hold its cork shape. Shaping it warm makes it soft and sticky, so the croquettes can break or lose their form in the frying fat.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, flour, beef, mustard, pork, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, flour, beef, mustard, pork, 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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