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Hashed or Minced Veal

A veal mince cooked with broth, lemon peel, milk, butter, flour, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed or Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into slices and mince it as finely as possible without chopping.

  2. In a stew pan, combine the minced veal with a few spoons of broth.

  3. Add the minced lemon peel and milk or cream.

  4. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour, and season with salt.

  5. Optionally, add lemon pickle or basil wine and a pinch of curry powder.

Assemble and brown

  1. Line a dish with lightly toasted bread.

  2. Pour the minced veal mixture into the dish.

  3. Top with breadcrumbs, sprinkle with butter, and brown in a Dutch oven or cheese toaster.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing meaty texture once finely minced.
Butter
Enriches the mixture and helps the topping brown richly in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the minced veal mixture so it holds together rather than running.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the minced veal tender and smooth.
Broth
Moistens the minced veal and carries savory flavor through the mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the breadcrumb topping. Browning relies on heat reaching the surface and on fat in the butter; the topping can scorch before it colors if left unwatched, or stay pale if the heat is too low.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, butter, flour, bread. 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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