Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Veal Fricasseed

A veal fricassee made with butter, onion, carrot, thyme, lemon, flour, water, egg yolks, bread crumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Breast of Veal Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Soak the breast of veal in warm water for a few minutes to whiten it.

  2. Cut the veal into small pieces.

  3. Dredge the veal with flour.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, thyme, lemon peel, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  3. Add the veal to the stew pan with the water.

  4. Simmer for two hours without browning the meat.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Remove the veal from the pan.

  2. Skim the fat from the gravy.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, bread crumbs, salt, and nutmeg into the sauce.

  4. Serve with the veal.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Main protein that becomes tender during the long, gentle simmer.
Flour
Coats the veal and thickens the cooking liquid into a light gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.
White bread crumbs
Help thicken the sauce and give it body.

The step that matters

Simmer without browning the meat. Keeping the veal pale and simmering gently keeps the meat tender and the sauce light in colour. Browning or boiling would toughen the proteins and darken the fricassee.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes