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Veal Croquettes

Veal croquettes are small meatballs of ground veal and onion, coated in crumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal and onion

  1. Boil the veal steak until tender, using minimal water.

  2. Once cold, grind the veal with the onion.

Make the binder

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

  2. Pour in the sweet milk and veal broth, cooking until smooth and thick.

  3. Add salt, pepper, parsley, and lemon juice.

  4. Mix into the ground meat and onion.

Form and fry

  1. Once cold and firm, form the mixture into balls.

  2. Dip each ball into the beaten egg mixed with hot water.

  3. Roll each ball in cracker crumbs.

  4. Fry in hot lard until light 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

Veal steak
Forms the main body of the croquettes and gives them their meaty flavor and texture.
Butter and flour
Cooked together to make a roux that thickens the milk and broth into a binding sauce.
Sweet milk and veal broth
Form the liquid that is cooked with the roux to a smooth, thick sauce that holds the mixture together.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder and glue so the cracker crumbs adhere to the outside of each ball.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Chilling the mixture before shaping. The binder must be cold and firm before forming, otherwise the balls soften, lose their shape, and can break apart in the hot lard.

Swap the onion

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

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

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