Name: Minced Veal
Ingredients: 1 pound rare cooked veal (roasted or boiled); beef gravy (enough to cook the veal); 1 teaspoon caviar; toasted bread (for serving); slices of bacon (for garnish)

Why it works: Veal and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,784 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

1 pound rare cooked veal (roasted or boiled)
beef gravy (enough to cook the veal)
1 teaspoon caviar
toasted bread (for serving)
slices of bacon (for garnish)

Directions

Prepare

Chop the rare cooked veal very finely.
Heat enough beef gravy in a pot to cook the veal.

Make the mince

Dissolve 1 teaspoon of caviar in the gravy.
Add the minced veal to the gravy and boil for 1 minute.

Serve

Serve the mixture in a soup dish on top of toasted bread.
Garnish with broiled slices of bacon.

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.

Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,784 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Caviar + breadtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together65 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).
Beef + caviartop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together19 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal: Provides the main meat, which is cooked briefly in the hot gravy until heated through.
Beef gravy: Supplies the liquid and savory flavor that heats and coats the minced veal.
Caviar: Adds a salty, briny flavor to the gravy.

“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.