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A Fricandeau of Veal

A veal roast larded with bacon, stewed with onions, carrot, herbs, mace, and ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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 ↓

A Fricandeau of Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Beat the veal with a rolling pin to tenderize it.

  2. Remove the skin and trim the rough edges.

  3. Lard the top and sides with fat bacon.

  4. Cover the meat with white paper.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the meat in a stewpan with any additional veal or mutton, onions, carrot, sweet herbs, mace, and ham or bacon.

  2. Cover the pan tightly and stew slowly for 3 hours.

  3. Remove the meat and skim off the fat.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, becoming tender through long, slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Larding adds fat that bastes the lean veal from within as it cooks.
Onions
Break down during stewing to add sweetness and body to the cooking liquid.
Lean ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stewing liquid and the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stew slowly with the pan tightly covered. Gentle, sealed simmering keeps the veal moist and lets collagen break down into tender meat. Rapid boiling would toughen the muscle fibres and dry the surface, and an uncovered pan would lose the liquid needed to braise the meat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, nutmeg, onion, carrot, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, onion, carrot, ham. 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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