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Minced Veal

A minced veal dish simmered in a gravy of veal bones, mace, lemon, and cream, served over toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Remove meat from the bones of the veal and mince it finely.

  2. Boil the brown outside, gristles, and broken bones in water with salt, pepper, and mace to make gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy and combine it with the minced meat in a stewpan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add grated lemon peel, lemon juice, cream, and a mixture of butter and flour.

  2. Heat the mixture until hot throughout, then serve it on a dish lined with toast.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Veal
Provides the main meat, which is minced and gently heated in the gravy.
Butter blended with flour
Thickens the gravy and adds richness and a smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the flavour of the lemon and gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and cream.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour mixture. Flour must be cooked into the hot liquid to thicken smoothly; if it is added in lumps or not heated enough, it stays raw-tasting and grainy rather than forming a smooth sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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