Name: To Make an Excellent Ragout of Cold Veal
Ingredients: Neck, Loin, or Fillet of Veal; Butter or clean dripping; Flour; 1 pint boiling water

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make an Excellent Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Neck, Loin, or Fillet of Veal
Butter or clean dripping
Flour
1 pint boiling water

Directions

Prepare the veal

Cut the veal into handful cutlets.

Fry the veal

Heat butter or clean dripping in a frying pan.
Flour the veal and fry until light brown.
Remove the veal from the pan.

Make the gravy

If no gravy is available, add boiling water to the pan and boil for 1 minute.
Strain the liquid into a basin.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,381 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,886 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, becoming tender after the cutlets are fried and simmered.
Flour: Coats the veal so it browns in the fat and helps thicken the gravy.
Butter or clean dripping: Conducts heat in the frying pan and browns the floured veal, adding richness.

“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.