Skip to main content
Main

Veal Stew or Fricassee

A veal stew with onions, potatoes, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Stew or Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Cover the veal with boiling water.

  2. Skim the surface as it begins to boil.

  3. Add onions, salt, and pepper.

  4. Simmer until the meat is tender.

Add the vegetables and thicken

  1. Soak the potatoes in cold water.

  2. Parboil the potatoes for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the potatoes to the stew.

  4. Mix flour with cold water.

  5. Add the flour mixture to the stew.

Finish and serve

  1. Adjust seasoning as desired.

  2. Stir in cream or butter.

  3. Remove bones 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 long, gentle simmering.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, becoming soft and absorbing the stew's flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly body-rich sauce.
Cream or butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture to the stew. Flour mixed with cold water disperses without lumps; added to hot liquid it thickens evenly, while dry flour dropped in would clump.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, potato, flour, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, potato, flour, cream. 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.

More veal stew recipes

with Rice 16with Peas 10with Vegetables 9French 5with Gooseberries 5with Green Peas 5 See all 159 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes