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Veal Croquettes

A dish of veal croquettes made with veal, onions, spices, and rice or mashed potatoes, fried and served with peas or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Cook the knuckle of veal with bay leaves, onion, celery salt, cloves, salt, pepper, and parsley until tender.

  2. Let the meat cool, then chop it very fine.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the two onions finely and fry them in plenty of butter until done.

  2. Mix the chopped meat and onions with either rice or mashed potatoes thoroughly.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add some of the cooking liquid.

Shape and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into croquettes, dip in egg, and roll in cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in deep fat or a mix of butter and lard.

  3. Serve with peas or tomato 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Knuckle of veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes the body of the croquettes.
Rice or mashed potatoes
Binds the chopped meat and onions so the croquettes hold their shape.
Butter
Fat that softens and sweetens the onions and adds richness to the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating during frying.

The step that matters

Adding cooking liquid to the mixture. Starch from the rice or potato absorbs moisture as the mixture stands, so a dry filling crumbles when shaped and fried. Adding a little cooking liquid restores moisture and keeps the croquettes cohesive.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, celery, pepper, parsley, butter, rice):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, celery, pepper, parsley, butter, rice. 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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