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Mincer Veal

A veal stew with herbs, mace, peppercorns, and ham, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Mincer Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Break down the bones of the veal joint and add the trimmings.

  2. Add herbs, carrot or celery, mace, peppercorns, and ham to the pot.

  3. Pour in 1½ pints of water and stew for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the gravy and let it cool, then skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the veal into small pieces, removing gristle and brown edges.

  2. Season with salt, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  3. Serve with croutons in and around the dish.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

White veal
Provides the meat that is cut into small pieces and forms the body of the mincemeat.
Water
Forms the stock with the bones and trimmings, extracting flavour and gelatin during stewing.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury flavour of the meat.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat after straining. Fat left in the strained gravy as it cools can make the finished mincemeat greasy. Chilling and lifting off the solidified fat leaves a cleaner, lighter result.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, ham, nutmeg, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, ham, nutmeg, lemon. 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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