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Minced Veal

A stew of minced veal simmered with stock, herbs, and lemon rind, finished with 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, then cut it into small squares without chopping.

  2. Mix the veal with mace and lemon rind.

  3. Dredge the veal with flour.

Make the stock

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

  2. Cover and stew gently for about 1 hour.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Remove the fat.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and mix it with flour.

  2. Add veal stock and milk.

  3. Stir until it boils.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

  5. Add cream if desired.

  6. Add the minced veal to the sauce.

  7. 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 body of the dish, providing meaty texture and flavor.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness to the sauce, mellowing its flavor.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling. Once the minced veal is added to the thickened sauce, boiling can toughen the meat and cause the sauce to break or become grainy, so gentle heating keeps it tender and smooth.

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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