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Veal Croquettes

A dish of veal balls coated in crackers and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Boil the veal until tender, then let it cool and chop it finely.

  2. Season the chopped veal with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the binder

  1. In a saucepan, rub the butter and flour together, then melt over medium heat.

  2. Add the milk to the melted mixture and stir until it thickens.

  3. Pour the thickened mixture over the veal and mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, shape the mixture into balls.

  2. Dip each ball in the egg, then roll in the rolled crackers.

  3. Heat lard in a pan and fry the croquettes until golden brown.

  4. Serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Veal
Provides the main meaty body and bulk of the croquette filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the filling and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding sauce that holds the chopped veal together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the thickened sauce, giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg
Coats the balls so the cracker crumbs stick and form a crisp outer layer.
Rolled crackers
Form the crisp, browning outer crust when the croquettes are fried.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture is too soft to hold its shape and can crack or fall apart in the coating and frying. Cooling lets the flour-thickened sauce set so the balls stay firm.

“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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