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Sweet-potato Croquettes

A fried croquette made from mashed sweet potatoes, butter, eggs, and seasonings, coated in bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet-potato Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the sweet potatoes until fine.

  2. Mix in the butter, eggs, salt, and pepper until well combined.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into cork-shaped croquettes or small round balls.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until light brown.

  2. Remove and drain on blotting paper before serving.

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

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

  2. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 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

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the croquette, giving a soft, moist, lightly sweet filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the mash and improving its flavour and mouthfeel.
Eggs
Bind the mashed mixture so the croquettes hold their shape, and the egg coating helps crumbs stick.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until light brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb excess oil and turn greasy instead of crisping. Frying at proper heat quickly sets the crumb coating and keeps the inside moist.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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

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