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A Ragout of Cold Veal

A ragout made with veal, butter, flour, cold gravy, tomato ketchup, and boiled ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat a large piece of butter in a frying pan.

  2. Dredge the veal slices with flour and fry until nicely browned.

  3. Remove the meat from the pan.

  4. Add cold gravy to the pan and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Stir in ⅓ cup of tomato ketchup.

  6. Return the veal and add slices of boiled ham.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

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
Forms the main body of the dish, and browning it adds savoury flavour.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns well and helps thicken the sauce.
Cold gravy
Forms the saucy base that the veal and ham are finished in.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Boiled ham
Adds salty, savoury meat flavour to the ragout.

The step that matters

Fry the dredged veal until nicely browned. Browning the floured surface creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. If the pan is crowded or not hot enough, the veal steams instead of browning, and the sauce loses depth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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