Skip to main content
Main

Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are fried meat balls coated in breadcrumbs, served with tomato or cream sauce.

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

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Prepare the cereal mush by mixing 1 cup of Pillsbury's Best Cereal with boiling water in a 2:1 ratio until stiff.

  2. Mix the chopped veal with the cereal mush and season with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  3. Chill the mixture, then shape it into cones.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cone in beaten egg, then in crumbs, and again in egg.

  2. Fry the coated croquettes in deep oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cooked veal
Provides the main body and meaty flavour of the croquette.
Pillsbury's best cereal mush
Binds the chopped veal so the cones hold their shape.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and helps it hold together.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Beaten eggs
Form the coating that helps crumbs stick and browns during frying.

The step that matters

Chill the mixture before shaping. A soft, warm mixture is hard to shape and can fall apart. Chilling firms the fats and starches so the cones hold their form through coating and frying.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, cream, 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes