Skip to main content
Main

Another Teal Croquette

A veal croquette made with finely chopped veal, bread crumbs, spices, and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Another Teal Croquette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the veal very finely.

  2. Add half as much bread crumbs as veal and season with mace, pepper, and salt. Mix in one raw egg.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into thin pieces about three inches long.

  2. Dip each piece in egg and then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Serve in a small flat dish, garnished with parsley.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 croquette, giving it a meaty texture and flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body, and form a crisp outer coating when fried.
Raw egg
Binds the mixture together so the pieces hold their shape while frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to crisp and brown the coated outside quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb oil and the croquettes turn greasy and can fall apart before the centre is cooked.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, pepper, egg, parsley. 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