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Veal Mince

A veal mince gravy served on buttered toast, garnished with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Veal Mince

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Chop the veal very fine.

  2. Make a gravy with the stock and season with salt, pepper, and mace or nutmeg.

  3. Heat the gravy until very hot.

  4. Thicken the gravy with butter stirred with flour until smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the minced veal and heat through.

  2. Stir in a little cream just before removing from heat.

  3. Serve on slices of buttered toast on a hot platter.

  4. Garnish with thin slices of lemon on top.

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. Butter + creamtop 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. Butter + lemontop 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

Minced veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the gravy until heated through.
Flour
Thickens the gravy with butter so it becomes smooth and clings to the meat.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and, cooked with flour, forms the thickening base.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with butter stirred with flour until smooth. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter and stirred well before adding liquid or it forms lumps. Keep stirring so the starch dissolves evenly and the gravy thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

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

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