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Minced Veal

A dish of minced veal cooked in cream with lemon juice and zest, seasoned with salt, mace, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the cold veal into slices, removing the brown edges and fat.

  2. Chop the meat into square pieces and flour them well.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the floured veal, cream, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Add salt, mace, and white pepper.

  2. Shake over low heat.

  3. Do not let it boil for more than 1 minute to keep the meat tender.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 is cooked gently in the sauce.
Flour
Coats the meat so the cream sauce thickens and clings to it.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cream and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Avoid prolonged boiling. Boiling cream for long can cause it to separate and makes meat proteins contract and toughen. Keeping the heat low and the boil brief keeps the sauce smooth and the veal tender.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, cream, lemon, mace. 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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