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Minced Veal

A dish of finely minced veal simmered in a gravy of bone broth, butter, flour, and milk or cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold veal into slices and mince it very fine with a chopping knife.

  2. Season the minced veal with pepper, coarse sea salt, grated lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  3. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan with a little water and simmer over hot coals to extract the gravy.

Make the dish

  1. Place the minced veal into a stewpan, strain the gravy over it, and add a piece of butter rolled in flour and a little milk or cream.

  2. Let it simmer together until thoroughly warmed, but do not allow it to boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted and buttered three-cornered pieces of bread arranged around the inside of the dish.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, minced fine for a smooth, tender texture.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it thickens the gravy and adds richness.
Flour
Combined with butter, it helps thicken the sauce as it warms.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the minced meat.

The step that matters

Warming without boiling. Once the milk or cream is added, boiling can cause it to curdle or separate and make the sauce grainy. Gentle simmering keeps it smooth while the meat heats through.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, milk, 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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