Skip to main content
Main

Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are fried meat patties made with veal, onions, spices, and either rice or mashed potatoes, served with peas or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 and prepare the filling

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

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

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

  4. Mix the chopped meat and onions with either rice or mashed potatoes, adding some of the cooking liquid if too dry.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into croquettes.

  2. Dip the croquettes in egg.

  3. Roll the croquettes in cracker crumbs.

  4. Fry the croquettes in deep fat or a mixture of butter and lard.

  5. 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

Veal knuckle
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long cooking and is then chopped into the filling.
Rice or mashed potatoes
Adds starch and bulk, helping the chopped meat and onions hold together as a shapeable mixture.
Cracker crumbs
Form a dry, crisp outer coating that browns during frying.
Butter
Softens and sweetens the onions and adds rich flavor and browning to the frying.

The step that matters

Adding cooking liquid to the filling. The mixture must be moist enough to hold its shape but not wet, since excess liquid makes croquettes soft and likely to break apart when coated and fried.

Swap the clove

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

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

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipes