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To Mince Veal

A minced veal dish flavored with lemon peel, nutmeg, and broth, served on toasted bread with fried breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

To Mince Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold roast veal.

Make the mince

  1. Add a little shredded lemon peel, grated nutmeg, coarse sea salt, and 4 or 5 tablespoons of broth, milk, or water.

  2. Simmer gently with the meat, being careful not to let it boil.

  3. Incorporate a bit of butter rubbed in flour.

Serve

  1. Serve on thin, three-cornered shapes of toasted bread.

  2. Strew fried bread crumbs lightly over the dish for added flavor and appearance.

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. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in liquid to stay tender.
Butter
Rubbed with flour, it thickens the liquid and adds richness and a silky texture.
Flour
Combined with butter, it thickens the simmering liquid into a smoother, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the proteins in the meat and can make the thickened sauce break or turn grainy, so keep the heat low.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, butter, flour, bread):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, butter, flour, bread. 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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