Skip to main content
Main

Veal Fricassee

A stew of veal pieces simmered with butter, bay leaves, mace, and rusk.

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

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into pieces according to the bones and wash it in cold water.

  2. Place the veal in a flat iron Dutch oven and cover it with cold water.

  3. Skim the surface just before it begins to boil, then add the butter, bay leaves, and mace.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cover and cook for 1.5 hours.

  2. After 1 hour, add pepper and salt to taste.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the browned flour with 1 tablespoon of butter and some of the veal liquor until smooth.

  4. Stir this mixture into the veal, then add the crushed rusk and let it simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Before serving, remove the bay leaves and mace.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Breast of veal
Provides the main meat, which turns tender during long, gentle simmering.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquor into a smooth, velvety sauce as it is stirred in.
Crushed double baked rusk
Soaks up liquid and adds body, helping the sauce thicken further as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour mixture into the veal. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump. Blending it first with butter and some cooking liquor until smooth lets it disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes