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Fricasseed Veal

A veal fricassee cooked slowly with butter, flour, gravy, cream, egg yolks, lemon, and optional mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fricasseed Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into small, thick slices of equal size.

  2. Melt the butter in a wide stewpan over medium heat until it begins to boil.

  3. Add the veal and shake the pan until the meat is firm on both sides, avoiding any browning.

  4. Stir in the flour until well mixed with the veal.

Stew and finish

  1. Gradually pour in enough boiling veal gravy to almost cover the veal, shaking the pan often.

  2. Gently stew the veal for 50 to 60 minutes, or longer if not tender.

  3. Add mace, salt, cream, egg yolks, and lemon juice, following the directions for a blanquette of veal.

  4. Optionally, stew strips of lemon rind in the gravy.

  5. Add mushroom buttons 20 minutes before serving.

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

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

  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. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, gentle stewing in the gravy.
Butter
Fat that firms the veal surface without browning and carries flavour through the dish.
Flour
Mixed with the veal to thicken the gravy into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.
Egg yolks
Added near the end to enrich and thicken the sauce into a creamy, velvety texture.
Rich cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce and mellowing its flavour.

The step that matters

Add the veal and firm it without browning. Shaking the veal in hot butter only until the surfaces firm keeps the meat pale, which is the classic fricassee look. Browning would create different flavours and colour than a white fricassee.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Applefits less well

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