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Yeal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are small meatballs made from minced veal, onion, milk, flour, butter, egg, and breadcrumbs, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Yeal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine minced veal and chopped onion.

  2. Mix milk with flour and add to the meat mixture; cook until thickened.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Dip each ball into the beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in plenty of hot 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.

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Veal
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them a savory, meaty filling.
Milk and flour
Flour thickens the milk, creating a binding sauce that holds the meat mixture together.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the shaped croquettes during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried in hot fat.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk and flour into the meat mixture. The mixture must cook until thickened so it holds its shape. If it stays loose, the balls may fall apart in the egg and crumb coating or in the hot lard.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, flour, butter, walnut, egg, bread):

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

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

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