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Calves' Feet Fricasseed

A fricassee of calves' feet simmered in milk, breaded, fried, and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Calves' Feet Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the feet

  1. Soak the calves' feet in cold water for 6 hours.

  2. Simmer the feet in milk until the meat can be easily removed from the bones.

Coat and fry

  1. Sprinkle the meat with bread crumbs and coarse sea salt.

  2. Dip the meat in the egg yolk.

  3. Fry the meat in oil or butter until golden brown.

  4. Serve with fricassee sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Calves' feet
Main protein; slow simmering softens its connective tissue so the meat comes away from the bone.
Milk
Gentle simmering liquid that cooks the feet evenly and helps keep the meat moist.
Bread crumbs
Outer coating that dries and crisps in the hot fat, producing a golden crust.
Egg yolk
Binding layer that helps the crumbs stick to the meat and promotes browning when fried.
Oil or butter
Frying fat that transfers heat to the coating and drives browning; butter adds a nutty aroma.

The step that matters

Fry the meat until golden brown. The coating must be fried in fat that is hot enough to dry and brown the crumbs quickly. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil, turns greasy and soggy, and the meat may not brown well.

“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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