Skip to main content
Main

Fricandeau De Veau

Fricandeau de Veau is a braised veal loaf cooked with onion, carrot, bay leaf, thyme, clove, stock, sherry, and a roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fricandeau De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove all skin and fiber from the veal.

  2. Pound the meat with a rolling pin until tender, then shape it into a round loaf.

  3. Lard the top side of the meat.

  4. Place the meat on a perforated pie dish that fits into a braising pot.

Make the braise

  1. In a pan, fry the onion and carrot in butter until softened.

  2. Add the fried vegetables to the pot along with the bay leaf, thyme, clove, and a roux made from the flour and butter, cooked until chestnut-brown.

  3. Blend the roux with enough boiling water to make it smooth.

  4. Add the stock and sherry to the pot, cover tightly, and bring to a boil over high heat.

  5. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for about 20 minutes per pound.

Glaze and serve

  1. Thirty minutes before serving, uncover the pot, place it in a 400°F (200°C) oven, and baste frequently until a rich glaze forms.

  2. Once cooked, transfer the fricandeau to a hot dish.

  3. Add a little broth to the pot, stir, and boil down rapidly for a few minutes.

  4. Strain and skim the gravy, then serve it in a sauceboat.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, becoming tender through pounding and slow simmering.
Flour
Thickens the braising liquid when cooked with butter into a roux and blended smooth.
Butter
Fat for frying the vegetables and cooking the roux, adding richness and browning flavor.
Stock
Forms the braising liquid that gives the gravy body and savory flavor.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Thirty minutes before serving, uncover the pot and glaze in the oven. Basting while the meat is uncovered lets the reduced liquid caramelize into a rich glaze. Covering it again or skipping basting leaves the surface pale and the gravy thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, thyme, clove, flour, butter, sherry):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, thyme, clove, flour, butter, sherry. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes