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A Brown Fricassee

A stew of veal, onions, ginger, eggs, and gravy seasoned with white pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the veal

  1. Lightly fry the veal pieces and place them in a stewpan with beef gravy.

  2. Season with white pepper, salt, browned onions, and whole ginger.

  3. Simmer slowly for 2 hours, skimming off any scum or fat.

Prepare the eggs

  1. Spread forcemeat over the hard boiled eggs and fry briefly.

  2. Add the fried eggs to the saucepan with the veal.

  3. Before serving, cut the eggs into quarters.

Finish the gravy

  1. Enhance the gravy with lemon juice and white wine or walnut liquor.

  2. If the gravy is too thin, stir in some browned flour.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main body of the dish, and slow simmering softens its connective tissue into tender meat.
Beef gravy
Supplies the liquid and savory base that moistens the veal and carries the flavor.
Browned onions
Add sweetness and deep color to the gravy through browning.
Forcemeat
Forms a rich, seasoned coating on the eggs that sets and browns when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly for 2 hours. A gentle, slow simmer lets the veal's connective tissue break down into tender meat. A hard boil toughens the meat and makes the gravy cloudy, so keep the liquid barely bubbling and skim off scum and fat as it rises.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, onion, ginger, egg, lemon, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, onion, ginger, egg, lemon, white wine. 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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