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Veal Fricassee

A stew of veal simmered in water, thickened with butter and flour, served over warm biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and onion work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 428 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Place the veal in a kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and skim off any foam.

  3. Reduce heat and simmer until the veal is very tender.

  4. Add salt and a sprinkle of white pepper just before it's done.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Remove the kettle from heat and stir the butter-flour mixture in slowly to prevent lumps.

  3. Return to heat and let it boil once to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve the fricassee over warm biscuits on a hot platter.

  2. If desired, add a small cooked onion for flavor.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over the dish just before serving.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Becomes tender through long, gentle simmering, forming the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and with flour forms the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Stir the butter-flour mixture in slowly off the heat. Adding the flour paste to hot liquid off the heat and stirring gradually spreads the starch evenly, preventing lumps. Reboiling afterward lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, white pepper, butter, flour, biscuit, lemon):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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