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Veal Hash

A dish of finely chopped veal cooked in butter and cream, thickened with flour, served over toasted buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the veal very fine.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the chopped veal, salt, and pepper; cook until heated through.

  3. Stir in the cream or milk.

  4. Dust in flour to thicken the gravy to your liking.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot mixture over toasted and buttered bread.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Veal
Provides the main meat and body of the hash.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the pan.
Cream or milk
Supplies liquid and moisture that forms the creamy gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy as it heats.

The step that matters

Dust in flour to thicken the gravy. Flour needs to be stirred into the hot fat and liquid so it disperses evenly. Added in clumps or to a liquid that is not yet warm, it stays lumpy and the gravy will not thicken smoothly.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

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

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