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Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are small, breaded, fried meatballs made from veal, milk, flour, parsley, butter, salt, pepper, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the white sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter in a saucepan, adding the flour, and gradually whisking in the milk until smooth.

  2. Stir in the salt, white pepper, and onion extract or juice.

Shape and coat

  1. Combine the white sauce with the chopped veal and mix well.

  2. Shape the mixture into croquettes.

  3. Dip each croquette in beaten eggs, then coat with breadcrumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the croquettes in deep hot lard 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main body and meaty filling of the croquettes.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that binds the filling together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce and adds flavour and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Chill-free shaping of a thick white sauce. The sauce must be thick enough to hold its shape when it is mixed with the veal. If it is too thin, the croquettes will slump and may break open in the hot lard. Cooking the flour fully in the butter before adding milk helps the sauce thicken evenly and become smooth.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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