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Veal, Minced

A dish of minced veal simmered in a lemon‑flavored white sauce, served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal, Minced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove all skin and gristle from the veal.

  2. Cut the meat into very small pieces, but do not chop it.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the white sauce as directed.

  2. Add the lemon rind and lemon juice to the sauce, and season with salt and pepper.

Simmer and serve

  1. Add the veal to the sauce, cover closely, and let it simmer for 30 minutes without boiling.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with forcemeat balls and slices of lemon.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Veal + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,072 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

Sauce and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,303 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
Provides the tender meat that forms the body of the dish.
White sauce
Supplies moisture and a creamy coating that keeps the meat soft.
Lemon rind
Adds aromatic oils that brighten the flavour of the creamy sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in meat and can cause the sauce to break or separate. Keeping it just below a boil, covered, lets the veal cook gently and stay tender and moist.

“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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