Skip to main content
Main

Fricandeau of Veal with Vegetables

A braised veal leg with vegetables, seasoned with bacon, mace, cloves, peppers, and finished with sherry or Madeira sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricandeau of Veal with Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the thick flank from the leg of veal.

  2. Lard the veal with seasoned strips of bacon.

Braise

  1. Braise the veal with carrot, celery, onion, parsley, green onions, slices of bacon, mace, cloves, and whole peppers for about 2.5 hours.

  2. Once done, remove the veal and strain the braising liquid.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Boil and skim the braising liquid, then add sherry or Madeira wine to use as a sauce.

  2. Serve garnished with any vegetable garnish or purée.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leg of veal
Forms the main meat that is larded and braised until tender.
Seasoned bacon strips
Lardoons add fat and moisture inside the lean veal as it cooks.
Slices of bacon
Add smoky, savory fat to the braising liquid, enriching the sauce.
Carrot, celery, and onion
Build the aromatic base that flavors the braising liquid and later the sauce.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavor to the reduced braising liquid sauce.

The step that matters

Boil and skim the braising liquid. Boiling concentrates the flavor of the strained liquid into a sauce, while skimming removes fat and impurities that would make it greasy and cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, celery, onion, parsley, clove, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, celery, onion, parsley, clove, pepper. 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 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes