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Fricassee of Veal

A veal fricassee simmered with white sauce, mushrooms, lemon, spices, and optional cream and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Fricassee of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Blanch the veal in boiling salted water.

  2. Cut the veal into 2-inch pieces.

  3. Place the veal in a casserole and cover with white sauce.

Simmer

  1. Season with salt, pepper, red pepper, nutmeg, bay leaf, mace, lemon slices, and sliced mushrooms.

  2. Cover and simmer slowly for 50 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add cream when the meat is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. If desired, mix egg yolks with a little milk or cream and add to the fricassee.

  2. Reheat thoroughly without boiling after adding the eggs.

  3. Remove the bay leaf, mace, and lemon slices 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Lean meat that becomes tender during slow simmering, forming the body of the dish.
White sauce
Coats and moistens the meat, giving the fricassee its creamy, cohesive texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the sauce as they cook.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety body when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce, softening its flavor.

The step that matters

Reheat thoroughly without boiling after adding the eggs. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heating, but boiling can cause them to curdle and make the sauce grainy, so the sauce must stay hot without reaching a boil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, mushroom, sauce, meat):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, mushroom, sauce, meat. 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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