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Veal Fricassee

Veal Fricassee is a braised veal dish cooked with onions, bacon fat, and a seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut veal cutlets into serving pieces and dust lightly with salt and pepper.

  2. In a frying pan, melt bacon fat until hot and sear the veal pieces quickly on both sides.

Braise

  1. Pour hot water into the frying pan, add sliced onions, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the meat to a hot platter and place a piece of butter on top of each piece.

  2. Pour off the gravy into a bowl, leaving 1 tablespoon in the pan.

  3. Add flour to the pan and cook the flour for a moment.

  4. Add the rest of the gravy and kitchen bouquet.

  5. Strain the gravy over the meat and serve.

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 + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cutlets
Form the main meat that is seared and then braised until tender.
Bacon fat
Searing fat that browns the veal surface and adds savory flavor.
Spanish onions
Sweetness and aroma that flavor the braising liquid and gravy.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy once cooked briefly.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that melts over the hot meat.
Kitchen bouquet
Darkens the gravy and adds a concentrated savory, caramel-like color.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour before adding the gravy. Cooking flour in fat for a moment removes its raw starchy taste and lets it thicken evenly. Adding liquid to raw, unheated flour often leaves lumps and a pasty flavor.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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