Skip to main content
Main

Veal Croquettes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the minced onion and milk, seasoning to taste.

  4. Cook until thickened.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Stir in the chopped veal.

  2. Shape the mixture into oblong croquettes.

  3. Dip each croquette in beaten egg.

  4. Coat each croquette with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the croquettes together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and body to the binding.
Chopped cooked veal
Provides the main filling, giving the croquettes their meaty texture and flavor.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs adhere evenly to each croquette.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce base and helps it cook smoothly.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool. A warm, loose mixture is too soft to shape and will slump or break apart in the oil. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up so the croquettes hold their form.

Swap the onion

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

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

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