Name: Minced Veal
Ingredients: ½ cup lean ham, chopped; 1 bouquet garni; 2 cups white stock (or homemade stock); 1 lemon, sliced; 1 ounce butter; 1 tablespoon flour; Salt and pepper to taste; 1 spoonful of cream (optional); Toasted or fried bread for serving

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the cold veal into small slices, trimming off fat, gristle, and brown parts.
If you don't have stock, break up veal bones and trimmings in a stewpan, cover with water, and season with pepper, salt, bouquet garni, mace, and peppercorns. Add lemon peel, carrot, and onion if desired.
Simmer the stock for 2-3 hours, strain, cool, and remove fat.
Melt butter in a stewpan, stir in flour, add stock, boil, and skim if necessary.
Let the mixture cool slightly, then stir in the veal and simmer gently to warm through.
Add cream if desired and serve with toasted or fried bread.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,536 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, flour, pepper, cream, bread):

Figfits about as well
Lemonthe original
Raisinfits about as well
Coconutfits about as well

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