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Ragout of Cold Veal

A ragout made from thinly sliced cold veal cooked with onion, flour, butter, catsup, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Cut the cold veal into thin slices and dredge with flour.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Remove the veal and add a little hot water to the frying pan.

  3. Mix in smoothly blended flour, salt, pepper, catsup, and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the veal to the pan and heat until very hot, then serve.

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

Cold veal
Is the main protein, cut thin so it heats through quickly in the sauce.
Flour
Dredges the veal and thickens the pan liquid into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds richness and promotes browning on the veal.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour and sweetness as it browns in the butter.

The step that matters

Blending the flour before adding it to the pan. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps; blending it smooth first lets it disperse evenly so the sauce thickens without lumps.

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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