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Mince Veal

Thinly sliced veal cooked with lemon, butter, and flour, served over toasted bread triangles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mince Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. In a large plate, combine thinly sliced veal with grated nutmeg, shredded lemon peel, and a pinch of coarse sea salt. Dredge with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil four to five tablespoons of water, then add the veal and a piece of butter. Stir well until warmed through.

  2. Squeeze in half a lemon or half a tablespoon of vinegar before serving.

  3. Arrange toasted bread triangles around the plate and pour the veal mixture in the center.

  4. Garnish with additional lemon. Optionally, use gravy instead of water for a richer flavor.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Veal
Provides the main protein, which is cooked gently in the sauce until tender and warmed through.
Flour
Coats the veal so the liquid thickens slightly around the meat.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the warm sauce.
Lemon peel
Adds bright, aromatic citrus flavor to the veal.

The step that matters

Boil the water before adding the veal. Bringing the liquid to a boil before adding the flour-coated veal and butter helps the flour begin to thicken the liquid. Adding cold liquid can leave the sauce thin or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, nutmeg, flour, butter, egg, bread):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, nutmeg, flour, butter, 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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