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Minced Veal

A savory dish of minced veal flavored with lemon peel, nutmeg, and salt, enriched 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
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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 the meat

  1. Mix in broth, milk, or water and simmer gently without boiling.

  2. Incorporate butter rubbed in flour.

  3. Optionally, add shredded shallot for extra flavor.

Serve

  1. Arrange 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cut fine so it stays tender rather than pasty.
Butter
Enriches the mixture with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the liquid so the mixture binds lightly.
Broth, milk, or water
Provides moisture so the minced meat stays soft during gentle simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the mixture tight and dry, so it should only simmer gently while the liquid is added.

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.

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