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Another Way to Make a Fricandeau of Veal

A veal dish made with chopped veal, kidney fat, anchovy, lemon, biscuits, fried and stewed in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Another Way to Make a Fricandeau of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped veal and kidney fat.

  2. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and anchovy.

  3. Soak the rusks or biscuits in boiling milk.

  4. Mix the soaked biscuits into the meat mixture until well combined.

  5. Form the mixture into balls.

Fry and stew

  1. Coat the balls lightly with flour.

  2. Fry the balls in butter until light brown.

  3. Stew the fried balls in highly-seasoned gravy.

Serve

  1. Carefully dish the balls and strain the gravy over them.

  2. Garnish with cut lemon.

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. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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
Provides the main meaty body that the balls are formed from.
Kidney fat
Adds richness and moisture so the balls stay juicy when cooked.
Rusks or biscuits
Soaked in milk, they bind the mixture and help keep it tender.
Butter
Browns the flour-coated balls in the pan, adding color and nutty flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and fat.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in butter until light brown. Flour-coated surfaces brown through the Maillard reaction, which gives flavor and color. Overcooking can dry the meat, while too little browning leaves the balls pale and bland.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, anchovy, biscuit, flour, butter. 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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