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Bichamelle or Minced Veal

A dish of minced veal cooked with milk, butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, and served with puff pastry leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bichamelle or Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the cold roast veal finely, discarding any stringy parts.

  2. In a frying pan, heat the milk or cream.

  3. Stir in the butter and flour until combined.

  4. Add the minced veal and heat thoroughly.

  5. Grate nutmeg or sprinkle mace over the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour into a dish with a border of puff pastry leaves.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the top and add a few pastry leaves for garnish.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Cold roast veal
Provides the main meat, which is gently reheated in the sauce rather than cooked fresh.
Milk or sweet cream
Forms the moist, creamy base that binds the minced meat together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream so the filling holds together rather than running thin.
Puff pastry leaves
Adds crisp, buttery layers that contrast with the soft meat filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour until combined. Flour must be fully blended into the fat and liquid so it thickens evenly. Lumps of flour stay raw-tasting and make the filling uneven, so stir steadily as the mixture thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits about as well

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