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Veal and Ham Croquettes

A savory dish of veal and ham formed into croquettes, coated in flour, browned in butter, and finished with a lemon‑parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the meat

  1. Pound and trim the veal and ham neatly.

  2. Heat a large amount of butter in a frying pan.

  3. Place the veal and ham in the pan, ensuring they touch the bottom.

  4. Turn the meat frequently until firm under pressure from a fork.

  5. Remove the meat to a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Dredge a little flour into the remaining butter in the pan. Stir.

  2. Add lemon juice, chopped parsley, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Pour the sauce over the meat and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a firm, tender texture when turned in butter.
Ham
Adds a savoury, salty flavour alongside the veal and firms up in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the butter in the pan to form a light, cohesive sauce.
Butter
Cooks the meat and carries flavour, and forms the base of the sauce with flour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances the rich meat.

The step that matters

Turn the meat frequently until firm under pressure from a fork. Frequent turning in hot butter lets the meat cook evenly and firm up without drying or scorching on one side, which is what keeps it juicy.

“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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