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A Brown Fricassee

A braised veal dish with onions, ginger, eggs, and a white wine or walnut liquor sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Brown Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Lightly fry the pieces of veal.

Simmer the fricassee

  1. Place the veal in a stewpan with beef gravy, white pepper, salt, browned onions, and ginger.

  2. Simmer slowly for 2 hours, skimming off any scum.

Add the eggs and finish

  1. Spread forcemeat about 1 inch thick over the hard boiled eggs and fry briefly.

  2. Add the fried eggs to the saucepan with the veal.

  3. Before serving, cut the eggs into quarters and add lemon juice and white wine or walnut liquor to the gravy.

  4. If the gravy is too thin, stir in a little browned flour.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender during long, slow simmering.
Beef gravy
Provides the liquid and savoury depth that forms the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Act as a rich, firm centrepiece once coated and fried.
Forcemeat
Adds a seasoned, meaty coating that browns when fried around the eggs.
White wine or walnut liquor
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasty, nutty colour and flavour.

The step that matters

Skimming during the simmer. Scum rises from the meat as it cooks and can make the gravy cloudy and taste bitter, so it should be skimmed off during the long, slow simmer.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, onion, ginger, egg, lemon, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, onion, ginger, egg, lemon, white wine. 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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