Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Another Way to Iviake a Fricandeau of Veal
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the veal
Cut a slice of veal about 1½ inches thick and lard the top.
Blanch the veal in boiling water for a moment.
Stew the veal in stock with a bunch of sweet herbs until cooked.
Make the glaze
Remove the veal from the saucepan and skim the sauce.
Strain the sauce and reduce it in another saucepan until almost evaporated.
Add the veal back to the reduced sauce and glaze it.
Once the larded side is well glazed, place it on a serving dish.
Add a little cullis and stock to the remaining sauce to detach it from the pan.
Pour this sauce over the veal on the dish.
Make the herb garnish
In a saucepan, combine sorrel, lettuce, chervil, parsley, cibol, and purslane with butter and cook until no water remains.
Add a pinch of flour moistened with cullis and gravy, then season with pepper and salt.
Stew the mixture until fully cooked.
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.
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Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together247 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together396 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together317 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Chervil + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together774 recipes
Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
-
Sorrel + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together234 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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; cooking it gently in stock keeps it tender and moist.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and helping the herbs cook in their own moisture.
- Cullis
- Thickens and deepens the sauce, giving it body and a concentrated meaty flavor.
- Flour
- Thickens the herb mixture and sauce so it clings instead of running thin.
The step that matters
Reducing the sauce until almost evaporated. Reducing concentrates the stock's flavor and gelatin, so the sauce becomes syrupy enough to glaze the veal. If it is under-reduced it stays thin and will not coat the meat.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, sauce, sorrel, lettuce, chervil, flour):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits better
- Parsleythe original
- Nutmegfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, sauce, sorrel, lettuce, chervil, flour. 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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