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Minced Veal

A veal mince simmered with stock, herbs, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Trim the skin and fat from the veal and cut it into small squares.

  2. Mix the veal with mace, lemon rind, and dredge with flour.

Make the stock

  1. In a saucepan, combine veal trimmings, stock, lemon rind, parsley, and thyme.

  2. Cover and stew gently for 1 hour.

  3. Let the mixture cool and remove the fat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan, mix in flour, then add stock and milk.

  2. Stir until it boils.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, add cream if desired.

  4. Stir in the minced veal and heat through without boiling.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 meat body and gives the dish its savoury, tender texture.
Flour
Coats the veal and thickens the butter roux that forms the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flour to form the roux base of the sauce.
Veal stock
Provides the meaty liquid that gives the sauce its body and flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mellows the sauce into a smooth, rounded texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the minced veal without boiling. Once the veal is added, boiling can toughen the meat proteins and make them dry and stringy, so the mixture should only be heated through gently.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, flour, parsley, thyme, butter, milk):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, flour, parsley, thyme, butter, milk. 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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