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Minced Veal and Eccs

A dish of minced veal cooked with lemon juice, water, butter, and flour, served over toasted bread with eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Minced Veal and Eccs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the veal

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped veal, lemon juice, water, butter, and flour.

  2. Heat the mixture thoroughly over medium heat.

Assemble and serve

  1. Dish the veal mixture onto the toasted bread slices.

  2. Crack an egg into the center of each slice.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing protein and a meaty texture when heated.
Eggs
Set when heated, adding richness and a soft, creamy yolk to the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the veal mixture.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the veal mixture holds together rather than running off the bread.
Bread
Provides a crisp, toasted base that soaks up the veal mixture.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture thoroughly over medium heat. Veal must be heated through so it is safe to eat, and the flour needs enough heat to thicken the liquid. Heating too fast can scorch the butter and flour on the bottom of the pot.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Vanillafits less well

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