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Ragout of Cold Veal

A ragout made from veal cutlets simmered in a butter and flour sauce with mushroom ketchup or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into cutlets.

  2. Heat a piece of butter in a frying pan until hot, then add flour and fry the veal until light brown.

Make the gravy

  1. Remove the veal and add 1 pint of boiling water to the pan; boil for 1 minute and strain into a basin.

Thicken and finish

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a separate pan and mix in enough flour to dry it up; stir over heat for a few minutes.

  2. Gradually add the strained gravy to the thickening and let simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, a little mace, and ⅓ cup of mushroom ketchup or wine until the meat is warmed through.

  4. Optionally, add sliced ready-boiled bacon to warm with the veal.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 meat that is browned and then warmed through in the sauce.
Butter
Browns the veal and, melted with flour, forms the base for thickening the gravy.
Flour
Browns the veal and, cooked with butter, thickens the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup or wine
Adds savoury depth and acidity to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour roux before adding the gravy. Stirring the flour into melted butter over heat cooks out its raw taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding liquid too early or without cooking leaves lumps and a floury flavour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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