Skip to main content
Main

To Mince Cold Veal

A veal mince cooked in a cream sauce with lemon and spices.

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

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

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut away all the brown and fat pieces of the cold veal, and mince the white part only.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine sweet cream and a little butter, then thicken with flour while stirring constantly to prevent lumps.

  2. Once it boils, add the minced veal and season with lemon zest, coarse sea salt, and a scrape of nutmeg.

  3. Continue tossing on the heat until the sauce thickens slightly.

  4. Just before serving, squeeze in the juice of a 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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal
Provides the main protein, which is minced and gently warmed in the sauce.
Sweet cream
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it richness and body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the cream base.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce that coats the veal.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with flour. Flour added to hot cream clumps unless it is whisked in while stirring constantly. Stirring spreads the starch evenly so each grain hydrates and thickens the sauce smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes