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Minced Veal

A finely minced veal mixture simmered with broth, lemon, milk, butter, flour, salt and lemon pickle or juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the veal as finely as possible; do not chop it.

  2. Place the minced veal in a stewpan with a few spoons of veal or mutton broth.

Cook

  1. Add the minced lemon peel and milk or cream.

  2. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and lemon pickle or lemon juice.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Forms the main body of the dish once finely minced and warmed in broth.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux that thickens the mixture into a smooth, coating consistency.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the minced meat.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic oils that give a bright citrus fragrance.
Lemon pickle or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Thicken with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and mixture so it swells evenly; added unevenly or undercooked, it leaves lumps or a raw starchy taste.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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