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A Ft 'icassee of Cold Veal

A sauce of veal, herbs, mace, flour, butter, milk, egg yolk, pickled and fresh mushrooms, and lemon juice served over cold veal slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

A Ft 'icassee of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Place the slices of cooked veal in a stew-pan with water, sweet herbs, and mace.

  2. Let it stew until tender, then remove the herbs.

  3. Mix flour and butter in a separate pan and add to the stew to thicken.

  4. Stir in the milk and beaten egg yolk, then add pickled mushrooms and fresh mushrooms if available.

  5. Keep stirring until it boils, then add lemon juice and stir well to prevent curdling.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (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 main protein, which becomes tender through slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Thickens the stew into a sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and smoothing the thickened sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the sauce, mellowing its flavour.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice after boiling. Egg yolk in the sauce can curdle when acid is added to it or it is overheated. Keep stirring constantly and add the lemon juice only once the sauce has boiled, stirring well so the egg stays smooth.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, milk, egg, mushroom, lemon. 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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