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Semels of Farce, with Piquant Sauce

Semels of Farce, with Piquant Sauce is a meatball-like dish made from veal, livers, ham, marrow, truffles, and shallot, served with a piquant sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and liver match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 392 recipes mention both. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

Semels of Farce, with Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the veal, livers, fat ham, Jean ham, marrow, truffles, shallot, and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture in a stewpan over low heat, stirring constantly until the veal turns white.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Once cooled, pound the mixture in a mortar until fine.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small semels.

  2. Dip each semel in egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Heat clarified butter in a pan and fry the semels until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the semels on a dish with sauce in the center.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the bulk of the meat and sets firmly when gently heated, giving the meatballs body.
Fat livers
Adds richness and a soft, moist texture to the meat mixture.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs stick to each semel.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.
Clarified butter
Fries the semels evenly and browns their coating with a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the meat mixture until the veal turns white. Stirring over low heat keeps the mixture from scorching or cooking unevenly, and the veal should only just set. Overcooking at this stage makes the later shaped meatballs dry and tough.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, liver, ham, beef, truffle, pepper, egg):

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Onionabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Tomatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, liver, ham, beef, truffle, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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