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Minced Veal

A dish of finely minced veal cooked with spices, gravy, butter, flour, and milk or cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the cold veal into slices and mince it very finely with a chopping knife.

  2. Season the minced veal with pepper, coarse sea salt, sweet marjoram, grated lemon peel, and nutmeg.

Make the gravy

  1. Put the bones and trimmings in a saucepan with a little water and simmer over medium heat to extract the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy over the minced veal in a stew pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter rolled in flour and a little milk or cream.

  2. Simmer everything together until thoroughly warmed, but do not allow it to boil.

  3. Toast and butter some pieces of bread and place them around the inside of the serving dish.

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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 provides the meat flavour.
Butter and flour
Rolled together, the flour thickens the liquid and the butter adds richness.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness to the warmed mixture.
Sweet marjoram
Contributes a warm, herbal aroma to the minced meat.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the rich meat.

The step that matters

Simmer everything together until thoroughly warmed, but do not allow it to boil. Boiling a mixture thickened with flour and dairy can cause it to curdle and turn grainy, and can toughen the minced meat. Gentle heat keeps the texture smooth and tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, marjoram, lemon, butter, flour, milk. 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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