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Mince Veal

A dish of finely chopped veal seasoned with pepper and salt, cooked with gravy or butter, served on toasted bread with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mince Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold roast or boiled veal very fine.

  2. Season the veal with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Heat and serve

  1. If you have cold gravy, add it; otherwise, use butter.

  2. Heat the mixture very hot, stirring often to prevent oiling.

  3. Serve on slices of toasted bread and garnish with lemon.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold roast or boiled veal
Forms the meaty base of the dish, so its fine chopping gives an even, spreadable texture.
Cold gravy or butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the minced veal from drying out as it heats.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture very hot, stirring often. Too little stirring lets the fat separate and pool as oil, and uneven heat can scorch the meat on the bottom of the pan. Frequent stirring keeps the fat and meat juices blended and heats the mince evenly.

“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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