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Minced Veal

Minced white veal heated gently in a gravy made from veal bones and trimmings, served with toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Boil the bones and trimmings of the meat in 1½ pints of water for 2 hours to make gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Let the gravy cool, then remove the fat.

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the white part of the veal into small pieces.

  2. Trim away gristle and brown edges from the veal.

  3. Season the veal with coarse sea salt, white pepper, nutmeg or mace, and grated lemon rind.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix 1½ teaspoons of flour with a small slice of butter to thicken the gravy.

  2. Combine the veal with the thickened gravy.

  3. Heat gently without boiling.

  4. Serve with pale toasted sippets.

  5. Add cream if desired.

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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

White veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to tender, delicate pieces in the gravy.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory base that moistens and flavors the minced meat.
Flour
Thickens the gravy with butter so it coats the veal rather than running thin.
Butter
Enriches the thickened gravy with fat, adding richness and smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling a mixture of meat and a flour-thickened liquid can toughen the proteins and cause the sauce to break or scorch. Gentle heat keeps the veal tender and the gravy smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, meat, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, meat, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter. 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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