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To Fricassee a Breast of Veal

A veal fricassee made with butter, water, onion, celery, and optional mushrooms, thickened with roux, cream, or flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Fricassee a Breast of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut a piece of veal.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the veal, water, onion, celery, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Let it simmer gently for some time.

  3. Cover with hot water and stew until the veal is perfectly tender.

  4. Remove any skin from the veal.

Thicken and serve

  1. Thicken part of the stock with roux, cream, or a mixture of flour and butter.

  2. Cover the veal with the sauce and serve.

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

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Celery + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,006 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the initial browning and the sauce.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness to the stock as it simmers.
Roux, cream, or flour and butter
Thickens the stock into a smooth, coating sauce.

The step that matters

Stew until perfectly tender. Veal breast is rich in connective tissue, which breaks down only with long, gentle simmering. Stopping early leaves the meat tough, while a hard boil can toughen muscle fibres and make the sauce cloudy.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, onion, white pepper, cream, mushroom):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, onion, white pepper, cream, mushroom. 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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