Skip to main content
Main

Fricandeau Op Veal

A slow‑cooked veal dish braised with bacon, herbs, carrots, onions, and stock, finished with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fricandeau Op Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut a handsome slice of veal and trim it neatly.

  2. Lard the veal closely with fat bacon.

Braise

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and add the meat.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the herbs, the remaining bacon, the sliced carrots and the onions.

  4. Pour stock or water over until all is covered.

  5. Let it simmer for 5 to 6 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Put the meat on a dish and keep it hot.

  2. Strain the gravy and skim off the fat.

  3. Return it to the fire, add a pinch of flour and stir with a wooden spoon.

  4. Boil until thickened.

  5. Return the meat to the gravy and let it sit for a minute before serving.

  6. Serve with a puree of spinach, sorrel, or green peas.

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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat bacon
Lardons threaded through the veal add fat and moisture as it cooks, keeping the lean meat tender.
Veal
The lean main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering in liquid.
Butter
Fat that is melted first to start the meat browning and carry flavour into the braise.
Flour (in the method)
Starch that thickens the strained cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat gently. Simmering only just below a boil keeps the connective tissue softening slowly without the meat seizing and toughening. A hard boil over 5 to 6 hours would dry and tighten the fibres.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, pepper, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper, carrot. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes