Skip to main content
Main

Minced Veal

A dish of finely minced veal simmered with lemon peel, nutmeg, and salt, finished with butter and flour, served with toasted bread and fried crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Finely cut the cold veal without chopping it.

  2. Add lemon peel, nutmeg, and salt.

Cook

  1. Mix in 4-5 tablespoons of weak broth, milk, or water.

  2. Simmer gently with the meat, avoiding boiling.

  3. Incorporate a bit of butter rubbed in flour.

  4. Optionally, add a little shredded shallot for flavor.

Serve

  1. Arrange thin, toasted bread pieces around the dish.

  2. Sprinkle fried bread crumbs over the meat or serve in small heaps.

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. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal
Is the main meat that is gently cooked into a tender, moist mixture.
Butter
Rubbed into flour, it adds richness and helps thicken and bind the liquid.
Flour
Combined with butter, it helps thicken the mixture and give it body.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the meat, avoiding boiling. Vigorous boiling toughens and dries minced meat, making it grainy and tough. A gentle simmer keeps the veal tender and moist.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, butter, flour, bread. 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.

More minced veal recipes

and Oysters 12and Macaroni 3Stew 3Moulded 3 See all 57 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes