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Veal Fricassee

A slow‑cooked veal dish with mushrooms, cream, and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Veal Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the veal

  1. Stew veal slowly until tender, adding seasoning halfway through.

  2. Strain off the juice.

  3. Heat the veal again.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour creamed together.

  2. Add cream, mushrooms, and beaten yolks of eggs.

  3. Heat through without boiling.

  4. Add the meat back to the sauce.

Make the dumplings and serve

  1. To make dumplings, sift flour, baking powder, and salt together.

  2. Add one beaten egg and mix to a stiff batter with cold water or half milk and half water.

  3. Drop batter into a greased steamer.

  4. Place a cloth beneath the lid to absorb moisture.

  5. Cook the dumplings.

  6. Pour the sauce over steamed dumplings.

  7. Garnish with parsley and 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 round steak
Slow stewing turns the tough meat tender and gives the dish its main body.
Eggs
Beaten yolks enrich and thicken the cream sauce as they gently heat.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, and gives the dumplings their structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the dumplings rise and become light.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, meaty texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Once the egg yolks are added, boiling can curdle the sauce and make it grainy. Gentle heat keeps it smooth and thick.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, egg, cream, butter, flour, meat):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, egg, cream, butter, flour, meat. 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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