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Fricandeau of Veal

A braised veal dish simmered with carrots, onions, parsley, cloves, and stewed mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fricandeau of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the veal

  1. Place the larded veal in a stewpan with the larded side facing up.

  2. Add water, sliced carrots, sliced onions, parsley, and cloves.

  3. Boil slowly for 3.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Brown the veal with a red-hot salamander before serving.

  2. Add stewed mushrooms 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Larding and long slow cooking keep the meat moist and tender while it cooks.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquor as they soften.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the cooking liquor as they soften.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, savoury texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Brown the veal with a red-hot salamander before serving. The veal has been cooked in liquid and is pale, so it needs a short blast of intense heat to develop browning. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and amino acids at the surface, which adds colour and savoury flavour. Too little heat or too long leaves it pale or dries the surface.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, onion, parsley, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, onion, parsley, mushroom. 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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