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Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are small meatballs made from veal, pork, celery, and bread crumbs, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the veal and pork until tender.

  2. Cut the boiled meat into small pieces.

  3. Finely chop the celery.

  4. Add the chopped celery to the meat.

  5. Mix in the beaten egg, bread crumbs, and lemon juice until well combined.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg yolk.

  3. Coat the croquettes with bread crumbs.

  4. Chill on ice for a few hours before frying for better texture.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot drippings 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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  5. Celery + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meaty body and bulk of the croquettes.
Pork
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender after cooking.
Egg
Binds the filling together, and the yolk helps the coating brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture in the filling and form a crisp outer coating.
Hop drippings
Fat that conducts heat for frying and browns the outside.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich meat.

The step that matters

Chill on ice before frying. Chilling firms the fat and binding in the shaped croquettes so they hold their shape in hot drippings instead of spreading or breaking apart.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, pork, bread, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, pork, bread, lemon. 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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