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Veal Fricassee

A stew of veal simmered in a butter‑flour sauce, seasoned with salt, white pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and biscuit work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 428 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Place the veal in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer until the veal is very tender.

  4. If using, cook the small onion with the meat for added flavor.

  5. Add salt and a sprinkle of white pepper just before it's done.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Remove the kettle from heat and stir the butter‑flour mixture in slowly to prevent lumps.

  3. Return to heat and bring to a boil once more.

  4. Just before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice.

  5. Serve the fricassee over warm biscuits.

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. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavor and smoothness.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a creamy sauce when heated with it.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, mild flavor of the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into the hot liquid. Adding the roux off the heat and stirring slowly helps the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Bringing it back to a boil then lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, white pepper, butter, flour, lemon, biscuit):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, white pepper, butter, flour, lemon, biscuit. 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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