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Veal, Minced, Plain

A minced veal dish simmered in stock with ham or bacon, butter, spices, and served with toast or croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal, Minced, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the veal by cutting or passing it through a mincer.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the stock with any bits of skin and gristle from the meat, a bunch of herbs, a bit of mace, and lemon peel until reduced to ¾ pint.

  2. Thicken the stock with the butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the minced veal, diced ham or bacon, salt, pepper, lemon juice, mace or nutmeg, and cayenne. Stir well.

  2. Serve hot with snippets of toast or croutons.

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

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

  2. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 the meat texture once minced and simmered.
Butter
Enriches the stock and thickens it, giving the sauce body and a rich mouthfeel.
Plain white stock
Forms the liquid base that is reduced and carries the flavour through the dish.
Cooked ham or bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a smoky depth to the meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances the fat.

The step that matters

Reducing the stock to ¾ pint. Reducing concentrates the flavour of the stock and its gristle and skin, which gives the sauce its body. Reducing too little leaves it thin and weak; reducing too far makes it overly salty and sticky once the meat is added.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, butter, pepper, 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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