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Veal Croquetts

Veal croquettes are breaded rolls of veal mixture fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Croquetts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the veal base

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

  2. Add the flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the cream, milk, or stock, stirring until very thick.

  4. Stir in the salt, pepper, celery salt, and chopped veal.

  5. Remove from heat and mix in the grated onion, chopped parsley, and lemon juice.

  6. Let the mixture cool, then shape it into rolls.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the egg with water in a bowl.

  2. Dip each roll in bread crumbs, then in the egg mixture, and again in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the croquettes in deep fat 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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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, giving it savoury meaty flavour and filling.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour, adding richness to the thickened mixture.
Flour
Thickens the cream, milk, or stock into a stiff sauce that binds the veal and holds the shape.
Cream, milk, or stock
Forms the liquid of the thick white sauce, adding moisture and body to the mixture.
Egg
Acts as the binding coating that helps bread crumbs stick to the rolls during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A thick sauce that is still warm is soft and sticky, so the rolls can slump or tear. Cooling lets the starch set the mixture firm enough to hold its shape through coating and frying.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, pepper, celery, veal, parsley. 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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