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Minced Veal

A savory veal mince cooked with spices, gravy, butter, flour, milk, served with toasted buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the cold veal into slices and mince it very finely with a chopping knife.

  2. Season the minced veal with pepper, salt, marjoram, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

Make the gravy

  1. Put the bones and trimmings in a saucepan with a little water and simmer over hot coals to extract the gravy.

  2. Strain the gravy over the minced veal in a stewpan.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour and the milk.

  4. Let it simmer until warmed through, but do not allow it to boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Cover the mince with a layer of moistened breadcrumbs and brown it under a broiler.

  2. Serve with toasted and buttered bread arranged around the dish.

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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is minced and served.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy when rolled into the butter and stirred in, giving body to the sauce.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, softening the flavour and texture of the gravy.

The step that matters

Do not let it boil. Once the gravy and milk are combined, boiling can cause the milk proteins to curdle and the flour-thickened sauce to turn grainy or separate. Gentle simmering keeps it smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, marjoram, lemon, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, marjoram, lemon, butter, flour, 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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