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Veal Croquettes

A fried dish of veal mixed with butter, flour, eggs, and milk, coated in crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 veal mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Beat the eggs or yolks until light, then mix in the sweet milk.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the butter and flour, stirring constantly until thick.

  5. Stir in the chopped veal, season with salt and pepper, and cook for 1 minute.

  6. Remove from heat and let the mixture cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Mold the mixture into oblong shapes.

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

  3. Fry in hot lard until golden brown, ensuring the lard covers the croquettes.

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

Veal
Forms the main body of the croquette and gives it its savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set when cooked, holding the shape.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a stiff base that holds the veal.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the base mixture.
Sweet milk
Moistens the base so it becomes a smooth, thick binder.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before shaping. The thickened mixture must cool and firm up so the croquettes keep their oblong shape and do not break or spread when dipped and fried.

“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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