Name: To Make a Ragout of Cold Veal
Ingredients: cold veal cut into cutlets; butter or dripping; flour; gravy or boiling water; pepper; coarse sea salt; mace; mushroom catsup or white wine; slices of cooked bacon (optional)

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Make a Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Heat butter or dripping in a frying pan.
Flour and fry the veal until light brown.
Remove the veal and add gravy or boiling water to the pan.
Boil for about a minute and strain into a basin.
In a stewpan, melt butter and add enough flour to thicken.
Stir for a few minutes, then gradually add the strained gravy.
Simmer for ten minutes and season with pepper, salt, mace, and mushroom catsup or white wine.
Strain the sauce over the meat and gently stew until warmed.
Add cooked bacon slices for extra flavor if desired.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Parsleyfits better
Marjoramfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.