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Hashed Vbal

A hash of minced veal in a thickened broth and lemon sauce, baked over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Hashed Vbal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the meat into slices or mince the veal as fine as possible.

  2. In a stew-pan, combine the minced veal with a few spoons of broth.

Make the sauce

  1. Add minced lemon peel and milk or cream.

  2. Thicken the mixture with butter and flour, then season with salt, lemon pickle, or curry powder.

  3. If using eggs, beat the yolks with a little milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a dish with toasted bread sippets.

  2. Pour the veal mixture over the bread and bake until browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, giving it its meaty substance and texture.
Butter and flour
Together they thicken the mixture into a cohesive, spoonable sauce.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the mixture and mellowing its flavour.
Eggs
Yolks beaten into the mixture can help bind and set it, adding richness.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oil that brightens the flavour of the rich meat.

The step that matters

Pour the veal mixture over the bread and bake until browned. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness; if the mixture is too wet or the oven too cool, it steams and pales instead of browning. Watch closely so it colours without drying out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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