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Fricandeau of Veal

A veal dish stewed with onions, carrot, sweet herbs, mace, bay leaves, broth, and ham, then glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fricandeau of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Beat the veal with a rolling pin to flatten it. Remove the skin and trim the rough edges.

  2. Lard the top and sides of the veal with fat bacon and cover with white paper.

Stew

  1. Place the veal in a stew pan with undressed veal or mutton, onions, carrot, sweet herbs, mace, bay leaves, broth, and ham.

  2. Cover the pan tightly and let it stew slowly for 3 hours.

Glaze and serve

  1. Remove the meat and discard excess fat from the gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy quickly until it reduces to a glaze.

  3. Keep the fricandeau hot and glaze it before serving.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Veal + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,015 recipes

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

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Larding adds moisture and richness to the lean veal as it cooks.
Onions
Build savory depth and sweetness in the gravy as they soften in the stew.
Veal or mutton broth
Provides liquid for the slow stew and becomes the base of the glaze.
Lean ham or gammon
Adds savory, salty flavor to the gravy during stewing.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy quickly until it reduces to a glaze. Rapid boiling concentrates the stock and gelatin into a glossy, thick glaze; if boiled too gently or too long, it can scorch or stay thin.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, carrot, ham):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, carrot, ham. 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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