Skip to main content
Main

Minced Veal

A dish of minced veal simmered with stock, herbs, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Trim the skin and fat from the veal and cut the trimmed veal into small squares.

  2. Mix the veal with mace and lemon rind, then dredge the veal with flour.

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal trimmings, stock, lemon rind, parsley, and thyme.

  2. Cover and stew gently for 1 hour.

  3. Let the mixture cool and remove the fat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter in a pan and mix the butter with flour.

  2. Add stock and milk to the butter-flour mixture and stir until boiling.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, and add cream if desired.

  4. Stir in the minced veal and heat through without boiling.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 fillet
Provides the tender meat that makes up most of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the flour and gives the sauce a rich, smooth fat base.
Veal stock
Supplies the main liquid and savory flavor of the sauce.
Milk
Adds body and mild sweetness, softening the sauce's flavor.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Once the minced veal is stirred into the sauce, boiling can toughen the meat and cause the sauce to separate or turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the meat tender and the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, flour, parsley, thyme, butter, milk. 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.

More veal mince recipes

Cold 3in White Sauce 3 See all 13 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes