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Hashed or Minced Veal

A veal hash made with minced veal, broth, lemon peel, milk or cream, butter, flour, and seasonings, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 slices.

  2. Mince the veal as finely as possible.

Make the filling

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the minced veal with a few spoons of veal or mutton broth.

  2. Add minced lemon peel and a spoonful of milk or cream.

  3. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, lemon pickle, or curry powder.

  5. If using cream, beat the yolks of a couple of eggs with a little milk.

Assemble and brown

  1. Line a dish with lightly toasted bread.

  2. Place the minced veal in scallop shells.

  3. Top the veal with breadcrumbs.

  4. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs with butter.

  5. Brown the veal in a Dutch oven or cheese toaster.

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
Forms the main body of the hash, providing meaty texture once minced.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and helps the breadcrumbs brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the broth-based mixture so it holds together rather than running loose.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the mixture, adding body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the minced veal into a creamy filling.
Bread
Forms a toasted base that soaks up juices and adds a crisp, golden layer.

The step that matters

Brown the veal. The veal is already cooked, so the goal is only to heat it through and colour the top. Too little heat leaves it pale and wet, while too much dries the mince and scorches the crumbs. Watch the surface closely.

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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