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Minced Veal

A minced veal dish simmered in broth, cream, and spices, served with toasted bread.

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 ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold veal as fine as possible without chopping it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine good broth with pepper, coarse sea salt, grated lemon peel, and a little mace.

  2. Rub together a little butter and flour, then add to the broth mixture.

  3. Let the mixture simmer until it thickens.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the veal and ½ cup of rich cream, heating until very hot but not boiling.

  2. Serve with three‑cornered slices of thin toasted bread around the dish.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Butter and flour 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

Cold veal
Provides the main meat; cutting it finely gives a delicate, tender texture.
Good broth
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the other flavours.
Flour
Thickens the broth as it simmers, giving the mixture body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the thickened broth.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Heating the veal and cream without boiling. Boiling cream can cause it to separate and turn grainy, and high heat toughens finely cut meat. Heating gently until very hot keeps the sauce smooth and the veal tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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