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Another Way to Leake a Fricandeau of Veal

A veal fricandeau stewed with white stock, ham, onion, mace, pepper, and sorrel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sorrel work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 419 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Another Way to Leake a Fricandeau of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the slices of veal and place them in a saucepan with white stock, ham, onion, mace, and pepper.

Cook

  1. Stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the veal, strain the gravy, and discard the fat.

  3. Boil the gravy quickly until it thickens to a brown jelly consistency, ensuring it does not burn.

Serve

  1. Scald the sorrel in boiling water, chop it, and heat it in the sauce.

  2. Serve the fricandeau on top of the sorrel.

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. Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Veal slices
Forms the main meat; slow stewing in stock makes it tender and moist.
White stock
Provides the cooking liquid that gently braises the veal and becomes the base of the gravy.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the stock and gravy as it cooks.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that contrasts with the rich veal and gravy.

The step that matters

Boiling the gravy down. Boiling quickly concentrates the stock and gelatin into a thick, brown glaze, but the gravy can scorch on the pan base if not stirred and watched closely.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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