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Minced Veal

A minced veal dish simmered in broth with herbs, spices, and flour, served with pale‑toasted sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Boil the bones and trimmings of the meat in 1½ pints of water for 2 hours to make broth.

  2. Strain the broth and let it cool to remove the fat.

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the white part of the veal into small pieces, trimming away gristle and brown edges.

  2. Season the veal with salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

Thicken and serve

  1. Mix the flour with butter to make a smooth paste.

  2. Combine the veal with the strained broth and thicken with the flour mixture over low heat without boiling.

  3. Serve with pale‑toasted sippets.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it simmers in the broth.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a paste that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Gravy
Adds concentrated savory flavor and body to the dish.

The step that matters

Thicken without boiling. Flour thickens liquid by swelling its starch as it heats. Boiling can break down the starch and leave the sauce thin, and it can make the sauce lumpy or cause it to scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, mace, ham, flour, butter, nutmeg. 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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