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Veal Cecils

Veal Cecils are small veal balls coated in breadcrumbs and fried, served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Cecils

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped veal, bread crumbs, salt, paprika, mace, onion juice, and egg yolks.

  3. Stir until the mixture is heated through, then set aside to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, form the mixture into balls the size of an egg.

  2. Dip each ball in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  4. Serve with tomato sauce.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 balls and gives them a meaty texture.
Eggs
Yolks bind the mixture together so the balls hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture, and later form a crisp golden coating.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mixture at the start of cooking.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. Warm mixture is soft and sticky, so it is hard to form into balls and may fall apart. Cooling lets the proteins and crumbs firm up so the balls keep their shape when coated and fried.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, bread, onion, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, onion, egg. 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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