Skip to main content
Main

Veal Croquettes

A fried croquette made with veal, butter, flour, onion, milk, egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the milk and minced onion, cooking until thickened.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the chopped veal and egg.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into oblong croquettes.

  2. Dip each croquette in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot lard 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

Butter
Enriches the flour paste, adding flavor and helping it form a smooth, rich base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that binds the croquette mixture.
Milk
Liquid that cooks with the flour into a thick, creamy binding sauce.
Chopped cooked veal
Main filling that gives the croquettes their meaty body and flavor.
Egg
Binds the cooled mixture so croquettes hold their shape, and forms a coating for the crumbs.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the veal and egg. A hot, loose sauce would scramble the egg and fail to hold a shape. Cooling lets the thickened base firm up so the croquettes can be formed and will stay intact in the hot lard.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, milk, egg, pepper, bread. 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes