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Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are small, fried meat cakes made with veal, cream, flour, butter, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the veal mixture

  1. Scald the cream in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub together the flour and butter, then stir into the hot cream until smooth.

  3. Add the chopped veal, salt, pepper, onion juice, and beaten eggs to the mixture.

  4. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly, until thickened.

  5. Set aside to cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

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

  3. Fry in boiling fat until light 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Cream
Makes the base smooth and rich, carrying the veal and binding the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the cream with butter so the mixture holds its shape when cooled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture and aids smooth thickening.
Cooked veal
Forms the main body of the croquette, giving substance and flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, and form the coating that helps crumbs stick.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The mixture must be cooled until firm; if it is still warm and soft, the croquettes will not hold their shape and may break apart in the hot fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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