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To Mince Veal

A dish of finely minced veal seasoned with lemon peel, nutmeg, and broth, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Mince Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Finely mince the cold veal without chopping it.

  2. Add lemon peel, nutmeg, salt, and broth, milk, or water.

Cook

  1. Simmer gently without boiling, then mix in butter rubbed with flour.

  2. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes and serve on thin snippets of bread.

Serve

  1. Arrange triangular snippets of toasted bread around the dish.

  2. Optionally, sprinkle fried bread crumbs on top or serve in small heaps.

  3. For variation, stew small mushrooms in butter, mince them, and add to the veal with cream, pepper, and flour.

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 + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 texture of the mince.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished mixture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the mixture becomes smooth and holds together.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the veal.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the finely minced protein and can cause the flour-thickened mixture to separate or turn lumpy. A gentle simmer keeps the veal tender and the texture smooth.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

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