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Minced Veal, Another Way

A minced veal stew simmered with stock, eschalot, spices, eggs, cream, and topped with pickled sheep tongues.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Minced Veal, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the veal

  1. Combine veal, stock, eschalot, nutmeg, lemon peel, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and salt in a pot.

  2. Let the mixture stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Add eggs and cream.

  4. Simmer for 5 minutes, ensuring it does not burn or curdle.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a deep dish and top with pickled sheep tongues.

  2. Arrange snippets of bread 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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, providing the meaty base that the rest is mixed into.
Eggs
Set when gently heated, thickening the mixture into a soft, custard-like texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture while helping keep the mixture moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich veal and cream.
Pickled sheep tongues
Provide a tangy, savoury flavour and firm texture as the topping.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding eggs and cream. Eggs set when heated, so over-high heat or long cooking can overcook them, making the mixture grainy or curdled and causing it to stick and burn on the base of the pot. Keep the heat gentle and stir.

“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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