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Minced Veal

A savory dish of diced veal and fat simmered with onion, flour, and seasonings, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. In a frying pan, combine the diced veal and fat.

  2. Add salt, pepper, flour, and chopped onion to the meat.

  3. Pour in the water and coloring, then stir to combine.

  4. Let it simmer gently for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the mixture on toast, optionally topped with poached eggs.

  2. For a baked version, place the mince in a tin pan, sprinkle with breadcrumbs, add butter or dripping, and bake until heated through.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Roast veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it simmers gently in liquid.
Fat
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the diced meat from drying out during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the mixture binds rather than running loose.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in the pan with the meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 20 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the diced veal tender and stops the flour-thickened liquid from catching or scorching on the pan base.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, flour, parsley, butter. 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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