Skip to main content
Main

Minced Veal

A minced veal dish simmered in a seasoned gravy, served with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil the bones and trimmings of the veal with the herbs, carrot, celery, mace, peppercorns, and ham in 1½ cups of water for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Let the gravy cool.

  4. Remove the fat.

Prepare and combine

  1. Finely chop the white part of the veal, trimming away gristle and brown edges.

  2. Mix 1½ teaspoons of flour with a small slice of butter to thicken the gravy.

  3. Season the veal with salt, white pepper, nutmeg or mace, and lemon rind.

  4. Combine the veal with the thickened gravy.

  5. Heat gently without boiling.

  6. Add cream if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted sippets.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

White veal
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat texture once finely chopped.
Gravy
Supplies the moist, savoury liquid that binds the chopped veal together.
Flour
Thickens the gravy with butter so it coats the veal rather than running thin.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and smoothing the thickened sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling can toughen the proteins in the meat and cause the flour-thickened sauce to break or become grainy. Gentle heat keeps the veal tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter, nutmeg. 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.

More minced veal recipes

and Oysters 12and Macaroni 3Stew 3Moulded 3 See all 57 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes