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Ragout of Cold Veal

A ragout made from cold veal cutlets simmered in a sauce of butter, flour, gravy, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the veal

  1. Heat butter or dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Flour and fry the veal until light brown, then remove it from the pan.

  3. Add gravy or boiling water to the pan and let it boil for about a minute.

  4. Strain the liquid into a basin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter, then add flour to dry it up. Stir for a few minutes, gradually adding the strained gravy.

  2. Simmer for ten minutes, then season with pepper, salt, mace, and mushroom ketchup or white wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Strain the sauce over the veal and gently stew until warmed through.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the sauce so it stays tender and warmed through.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and gives the veal a light browned coating when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the flour cook into the sauce base.
Gravy or boiling water
Forms the liquid of the sauce, carrying flavour from the fried veal.
Mushroom ketchup or white wine
Adds savoury depth and acidity to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour into the butter. Stirring the flour into melted butter and cooking it for a few minutes removes its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly. Adding the liquid gradually prevents lumps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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