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Ragout of Cold Veal

A ragout made with sliced cold veal, flour, butter, onion, and a sauce of hot water, flour, salt, pepper, catsup, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Dredge the sliced cold veal in flour.

Make the ragout

  1. Fry the veal in butter with the grated onion until browned.

  2. Remove the veal from the pan.

  3. Add a little hot water to the frying pan.

  4. Stir in smoothly-mixed flour, salt, pepper, catsup, and lemon juice.

  5. Return the veal to the pan and heat until very hot.

  6. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, and browning in butter gives it savory flavor.
Flour
Dredging coats the veal, and the smoothly-mixed flour thickens the pan liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the veal and adds richness to the pan sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the sauce as it fries with the veal.
Catsup
Adds sweetness, acidity and tomato flavor to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Return the veal to the pan and heat until very hot. The veal is already cooked and cold, so it only needs to warm through. Overheating can toughen the meat and cause the thickened sauce to break or become stringy, so heat just until steaming hot and serve promptly.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, pepper, 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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