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To Make an Excellent Ragout of Cold Veal

A ragout made from veal cutlets, thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, and mushroom ketchup or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Make an Excellent Ragout of Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the veal

  1. Cut the veal into handsome cutlets.

  2. Heat butter or dripping in a frying pan until hot.

  3. Flour the veal and fry until light brown.

  4. Remove the veal from the pan.

  5. If no gravy is ready, add 1 pint of boiling water to the frying pan.

  6. Boil for 1 minute.

  7. Strain the liquid into a basin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, melt 1 ounce of butter.

  2. Mix in enough flour to dry it up.

  3. Gradually add the strained gravy to the flour mixture. Stir continuously.

  4. Let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes until thoroughly incorporated.

  5. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and mushroom ketchup or wine.

  6. Strain the sauce over the meat.

  7. Stew gently until the meat is warmed through.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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
Provides the meat that is browned and then gently stewed until tender in the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying heat and enriches the flour mixture that forms the sauce base.
Flour
Coats the veal to brown it and thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Mushroom ketchup or wine
Adds savoury, acidic depth to the sauce, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the gravy into the flour mixture. Adding liquid to flour and butter without constant stirring lets lumps of starch form. Stirring while the liquid is added keeps the sauce smooth and lets the starch thicken evenly as it simmers.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, pepper, mushroom. 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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