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Fricandeau of Veal

A veal cut is rolled, seasoned, stewed with aromatics, then glazed and served with its own sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Cut a large piece from the fat side of the leg of veal, about 9 inches long and 1.5 inches thick and wide.

  2. Beat it with a rolling pin, remove the skin, and trim off the rough edges.

  3. Lard the top and sides with fat bacon, then cover it with white paper.

Stew

  1. Place it in a stew pan with any pieces of undressed veal or mutton, 4 onions, 1 sliced carrot, a bunch of sweet herbs, 4 blades of mace, 4 bay leaves, and 2 cups of veal or mutton broth.

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

Glaze and serve

  1. Remove the meat, discard the fat from the gravy, and boil the gravy quickly until it reduces to a glaze.

  2. Keep the fricandeau hot, glaze it, and serve with the remaining glaze in the dish and sorrel sauce in a sauce tureen.

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 leg
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Larding adds fat that keeps the lean veal moist during long cooking.
Veal or mutton broth
Provides the liquid for stewing and, reduced, becomes the savoury glaze.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the gravy as they soften during stewing.
Lean ham or gammon
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly with the pan covered. Gentle, covered stewing keeps the lean veal moist and tender. Boiling hard would toughen the proteins and dry the meat, so the heat must stay low.

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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