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Hashed or Minced Veal

A veal hash with broth, lemon peel, milk or cream, butter, flour, salt, lemon pickle or basil wine, curry powder, eggs, and toasted bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed or Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into thin slices or mince it as fine as possible.

  2. Place the minced veal in a stewpan with a few spoons of veal or mutton broth.

Make the hash

  1. Add minced lemon peel, milk or cream, and thicken with butter and flour.

  2. Season with salt, lemon pickle or basil wine, and curry powder if desired.

  3. If using, beat the yolks of a couple of eggs with a little milk and line the dish.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with lightly toasted bread slices.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat and body of the hash once minced and simmered in broth.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce and mellowing its flavour.
Eggs
Beaten yolks enrich the dish and help it set when used to line the dish.
Lemon pickle or basil wine
Adds acidity and aromatic tang that brightens the savoury meat.

The step that matters

Thickening with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, or the sauce stays pasty and can taste raw. Stirring while it heats keeps it smooth and prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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