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Tomato Fricandeatj

Veal cutlets served in a tomato gravy thickened with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Fricandeatj

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Pound and wash the veal cutlets.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Cook

  1. Fry the cutlets slowly until they are light brown on both sides.

  2. Stew the tomatoes until very dry, then strain through a sieve to remove seeds.

  3. Pour the tomato pulp into the gravy after removing the meat.

  4. Thicken the gravy with a piece of butter rolled in flour.

  5. Pour the gravy over the meat and serve hot.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + tomatotop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together709 recipes

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

  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

Veal cutlets
Provides the main protein, which browns in the pan to build flavour.
Tomatoes
Stewed down and strained, they form the sauce's body and tangy flavour.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it enriches the gravy and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the gravy so it coats the meat.

The step that matters

Stewing the tomatoes until very dry. Cooking tomatoes down drives off excess water and concentrates their flavour, so the sauce is thick and not watery when strained and poured over the meat.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, 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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