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Fricassee of Knuckle of Veal

A stew of veal knuckle pieces simmered in a milk‑based gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fricassee of Knuckle of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal and broth

  1. Cut the meat from the knuckle into thick slices and remove the bone.

  2. Boil the bone in 3 quarts of water for 2 hours to make broth.

  3. Strain the broth to yield ½ pint of gravy and remove the fat.

Make the gravy

  1. Stew 2 onions in the milk, then mash them to a pulp.

  2. Combine the onion pulp with the fat and flour to thicken the gravy.

  3. Season the gravy with salt and pepper, then add the veal pieces and gelatinous morsels.

  4. Simmer for 1 hour, then serve with toast snippets or fried 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 knuckle
Provides the meat and gelatinous morsels, and the bone gives body to the broth.
Onions
Stewed in milk and mashed to a pulp, they add sweetness and body to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the veal pieces.
Milk
Softens the onions and adds creaminess to the gravy.

The step that matters

Combine the onion pulp with the fat and flour to thicken the gravy. Flour must be fully incorporated into the warm liquid and fat so it swells and thickens evenly. Adding it to a hot liquid without mixing well causes lumps, leaving the gravy uneven in texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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