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Veal Fricassee

A veal fricassee simmered with onion, celery, and gravy, finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into thin pieces about 3 inches square and wash them.

  2. Place the veal in a pot with enough water to yield plenty of gravy and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface well after it boils.

Simmer and finish

  1. Add the onion, salt, and celery tied in a bunch, then cook slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Just before serving, mix the butter and flour together and add to the pot.

  3. Remove the meat and stir chopped parsley into the gravy before serving.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 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

Veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow cooking and flavours the broth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when mixed with butter and stirred in.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skim the surface after it boils. Foam and fat rising to the surface can cloud the broth and taste greasy, so removing them early keeps the gravy clean and clear.

Swap the onion

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

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

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