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Fricassee of Veal

A veal stew with onions, parsley, butter, flour, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the breast of veal into pieces as for stew.

  2. Add 3 chopped onions and some chopped parsley.

Cook

  1. Stew until the veal is tender.

  2. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

  3. Beat in the yolks of 3 eggs.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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

Breast of veal
Is the main meat, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Onions
Add aromatic sweetness and body to the stewed liquid.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Beat in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Add them off the heat or over very low heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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