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Fricandeau of Veal

A braised veal dish with vegetables, bacon, herbs, and demi‑glaze sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fricandeau of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Pare and trim the veal, remove the skin, and lard the surface with thin strips of larding bacon.

  2. Clean the vegetables, peel the onion, and slice all the vegetables.

Braise

  1. Melt the butter in a sauté or braising pan.

  2. Add the sliced vegetables, bacon trimmings, herbs, and bay leaf to the pan.

  3. Place the veal on top of the vegetables, brown slightly over high heat, season with pepper and salt, and moisten with enough stock to half cover the veal.

  4. Cover with well-buttered paper and cook slowly for about 1.5 hours, basting frequently.

  5. Remove the veal and keep it warm.

Finish and serve

  1. Reduce the liquid in the pan by half, strain it, remove the fat, add the meat glaze, and reduce again to demi-glaze consistency.

  2. Serve the fricandeau on a bed of spinach or mashed potatoes, pour the tomato sauce with the pan liquid around the dish, and serve the remainder in a sauceboat.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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 cushion
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during slow, moist cooking.
Larding bacon
Adds fat strips through the lean veal, keeping it moist and adding flavour as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the vegetables brown gently at the start of cooking.
Stock
Provides moisture for slow braising and becomes the base of the pan sauce.
Meat glaze
Concentrates savoury flavour and body when reduced into the pan liquid.

The step that matters

Slow cooking under a buttered paper with frequent basting. Cooking gently with the liquid only half covering the veal keeps the meat tender and moist without toughening it. Frequent basting returns juices to the surface so it stays moist and forms a glossy, well-coloured glaze.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, meat):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, meat. 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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