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To Mince Veal

A minced veal dish simmered with broth, butter, flour, and seasonings, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

To Mince Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut cold veal into very fine pieces without chopping.

  2. Add a little shredded lemon peel, nutmeg, salt, and 4-5 tablespoons of broth, milk, or water.

  3. Simmer gently with the meat without boiling.

  4. Incorporate a bit of butter rubbed in flour.

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Stew small mushrooms in butter.

  2. Mince the mushrooms.

  3. Add the minced mushrooms to the veal with cream, pepper, and salt.

  4. Simmer for 3-4 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange thin toasted bread slices around the dish.

  2. Optionally, add fried bread crumbs on top for flavor and appearance.

  3. Serve on thin slices of bread.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal
Provides the tender meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when stewing the mushrooms.
Flour
Rubbed with butter, it helps thicken the sauce around the meat.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the mixture.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavor and moisture to the minced filling.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the meat without boiling.. Boiling toughens the proteins in meat and can make it dry and stringy, while gentle simmering keeps it tender and moist.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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