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Fricassee of Veal

A veal and ham stew simmered with onion, lemon rind, mace, stock, finished with a butter‑flour roux, garnished with fried bread and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fricassee of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Cut the veal and ham into squares.

  2. Place them in a lined pan with the onion, lemon rind, mace, and white stock.

  3. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently for 1 hour or until tender.

  4. Remove the meat and strain the stock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and mix well.

  2. Gradually add the milk, then the strained stock, stirring until it boils.

  3. Cook well, then add salt and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the meat to the pan and heat through without boiling.

  2. Garnish with fried bread and chopped parsley.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Veal
Provides the tender meat that is the main body of the stew.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux for thickening the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a creamy, smooth texture.
White stock
Liquid that cooks the veal and forms the base of the sauce.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the meat and stock.

The step that matters

Return the meat without boiling. Once the meat is back in the sauce, boiling can toughen the proteins and make the veal dry and stringy. Heating it gently keeps it tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, lemon, milk, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, lemon, milk, flour, butter. 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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