Skip to main content
Main

Fricandeau

Fricandeau is a veal dish cooked with lardoons, served on a bed of sorrel, cucumbers, or spinach.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sorrel and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fricandeau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Lard the veal with lardoons.

  2. Cook in a stewpan for 10 to 15 minutes to firm the lardoons.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the veal and keep it warm.

  2. Strain and quickly reduce the gravy, skimming off any fat.

  3. Glaze the veal and serve it on a bed of sorrel, cucumbers, or spinach.

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. Sorrel + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sorrel + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Veal + spinachtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together261 recipes

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

  5. Veal + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender and sliceable.
Lardoons
Pork fat strips threaded through the veal, adding moisture and richness as they melt.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic bite that contrasts with the rich veal.

The step that matters

Quickly reducing the gravy. Reducing the gravy quickly concentrates its flavour into a glossy glaze without overcooking the veal. Skimming off fat first keeps the glaze clean and stops it from tasting greasy.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sorrel, spinach):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sorrel, spinach. 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.

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesSorrel SoupSorrel Soup23 recipes