Skip to main content
Main

Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are fried, crumb-coated meat balls made with butter, flour, milk, veal, and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 binder

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

  2. Gradually add the milk, cooking until thick.

  3. Stir in the chopped veal and let the mixture cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Mould the cooled mixture into cone shapes.

  2. Roll the croquettes in cracker or bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in deep fat until golden brown.

  4. Garnish with parsley and serve with or without 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. 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. 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

Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a stiff sauce that holds the veal together.
Milk
Forms the thick white sauce base that binds the chopped veal.
Chopped veal
Provides the main filling, set firm in the sauce so it can be shaped.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the roux that starts the sauce.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its cone shape and can break apart in the hot fat. Cooling lets the starch-thickened sauce firm up so the croquettes keep their form while frying.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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