Name: To Mince Cold Veal
Ingredients: Cold veal; Sweet cream; Butter; Flour; Salt; Lemon; Nutmeg

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

To Mince Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cut away all the brown and fat pieces of the veal, and mince the white part only.
In a saucepan, combine sweet cream and a little butter, then thicken with flour while stirring constantly to prevent burning.
When the mixture boils, add the minced veal and season with grated lemon, salt, and scraped nutmeg.
Keep tossing on the fire until the sauce thickens.
Just before removing from heat, squeeze in the juice of a lemon and serve.

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.

Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Raisinfits about as well
Lemonthe original
Coconutfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, butter, flour, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.