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To Ragout Cold Veal

A ragout of cold veal cutlets simmered in a sauce of gravy, onions, turnip, carrot, butter, flour, pepper, mace, catsup, and anchovy or mushroom powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Ragout Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the cold veal into small cutlets, trimming off gristle, skin, and bones.

  2. Make gravy with veal scraps, onion, turnip, and carrot.

Make the ragout

  1. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  2. Flour and brown the veal cutlets.

  3. Remove the cutlets.

  4. Strain the gravy into the pan.

  5. Thicken the sauce with flour mixed with butter until smooth.

  6. Add the cutlets back to the pan.

  7. Let them simmer slowly.

  8. Season with pepper, mace, catsup, and anchovy or mushroom powder.

  9. Skim the sauce.

  10. Pour it hot over the ragout.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal
Forms the main body of the ragout, cut into cutlets and browned for flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps the cutlets brown in the butter.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when browning the veal and thickening the sauce.
Onion
Flavours the gravy made from veal scraps, adding savoury depth.
Anchovy or mushroom powder
Adds savoury depth and umami to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour mixed with butter until smooth. Adding flour directly to hot liquid causes lumps; blending it with butter first lets the starch disperse evenly so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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