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Potted Veal

A veal dish simmered with gravy, spices, milk, flour, butter, and served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potted Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove 149 grams from the cold joint of veal and mince the rest very small.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the minced veal with veal gravy or strong broth.

  2. Season with white pepper, grated lemon peel, grated nutmeg, and milk.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour and butter, adding a little coarse sea salt and lemon juice.

  4. Stir over low heat until thoroughly hot, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup dish with sippets of bread on the side.

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main body and meaty flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, spreadable mixture as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour thicken the mixture smoothly.
Veal gravy or strong broth
Supplies the liquid and savoury depth that the minced veal is combined with.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour of the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat without boiling. Gentle heat warms the mixture through while keeping the flour-thickened sauce smooth. Boiling can cause the thickened mixture to turn grainy or separate, and it can toughen the minced meat.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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