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Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are small fried patties made from cooked veal, onion juice, parsley, salt, pepper, egg yolk, cayenne, and Veloute sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the ingredients in the order given and moisten with Veloute Sauce.

  2. Spread the mixture on a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into croquettes, coat with breadcrumbs, and fry until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with Creole 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  5. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked veal
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the croquettes.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and sets when heated, helping the croquettes hold their shape.
Veloute sauce
Adds moisture and richness, binding the mixture so it can be shaped.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. Spreading the mixture out to cool firms it up. If it is still warm and soft, the croquettes will slump and lose their shape when coated and fried.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

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