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Minced Veal

A minced veal dish simmered with herbs, carrot, mace, onion, and lemon, finished with butter‑flour sauce and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Remove any bones from the veal and place them in a pan with the water, lemon rind, herbs, carrot, mace, and onion. Simmer for one hour.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Finely mince the veal.

  2. In a pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour. Cook until slightly browned.

  3. Strain the liquid from the bones and add it to the pan with the flour mixture.

  4. Add the minced veal and season with pepper and salt. Simmer for five minutes.

  5. Remove from heat, stir in the lemon juice, and serve with toast and slices of fried bacon or forcemeat balls.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Lemon + carrottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 is minced and simmered into the dish, giving its main body and flavour.
Butter or dripping
Fat that is melted with the flour to form the base of the sauce and add richness.
Flour
Cooked in the melted fat to form a roux that thickens the liquid.
Lemon juice
Added at the end to brighten the flavour with acidity.

The step that matters

Cook the flour in the fat until slightly browned. Cooking flour in fat drives off its raw starchy taste and thickens the sauce more evenly. Stirring constantly prevents lumps and scorching, so the roux is smooth and tastes nutty rather than floury.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, lemon, carrot, onion, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, lemon, carrot, onion, pepper. 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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