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Hashed or Minced Veal

Minced veal cooked in broth and thickened, then topped with breadcrumbs and butter and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Mince the veal as fine as possible without chopping it.

Make the filling

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the minced veal with broth, lemon peel, milk or cream.

  2. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour, and season with salt, lemon pickle, or curry powder.

  3. If using, beat the egg yolks with a little milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with sippets of lightly toasted bread.

  2. Pour the veal mixture into the dish, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and a little butter.

  3. 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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, giving it a minced, tender texture.
Butter
Enriches the mixture and helps it brown on top.
Flour
Thickens the broth and milk into a smooth, cohesive filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling when used instead of cream.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the minced veal.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid to avoid lumps and a raw starchy taste, and the filling needs enough body to hold together when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, butter, flour, egg, cream, 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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