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To Mince Veal

A veal mincemeat seasoned with lemon peel, nutmeg, salt, broth, and optional shallot, mushrooms, pepper, cream, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Mince Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Mince the cold roast veal.

  2. Add lemon peel, nutmeg, salt, and broth, milk, or water.

  3. Simmer gently without boiling, then add butter rubbed in flour.

Add optional flavourings

  1. Optionally, add minced shallot or small mushrooms cooked in butter.

  2. If using mushrooms, mince them and add with their liquor, along with pepper, salt, cream, and a bit of butter rubbed in flour.

Simmer and serve

  1. Simmer for 3 to 4 minutes and serve on thin slices of bread.

  2. Arrange toasted bread snippets around the dish.

  3. Sprinkle fried bread crumbs on top or serve in little heaps.

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. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast veal
Forms the main body of the mincemeat, providing the meat base for the dish.
Butter
Rubbed into flour to thicken the simmered mixture and add richness.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling can toughen the minced meat and cause the flour-thickened liquid to break or turn lumpy, so a gentle simmer keeps the texture smooth and tender.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, nutmeg, 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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