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Small Fricandeau of Veal

A veal fricandeau simmered with bacon, garlic, onion, carrot, mushroom, lettuce, mace, allspice, salt, pepper, sugar, water, and brandy or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Small Fricandeau of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim off the skin and fat from the veal and lard it thickly with bacon.

  2. Rub the bottom of a pot with garlic three times, then place the veal inside.

  3. Add all ingredients except the brandy or wine.

Braise

  1. Cover the larding with buttered paper and simmer gently for three hours.

  2. Remove the paper, baste the veal, and continue to simmer for another 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Take out the veal, skim off the fat, and rub the gravy and vegetables through a sieve.

  2. Add the brandy or wine to the gravy and serve it over the veal.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + mushroomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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, becoming tender through long, gentle simmering.
Bacon fat
Larding adds fat and moisture that keeps the lean veal from drying out during cooking.
Onion
Builds the savoury base of the gravy as it softens and releases flavour into the liquid.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the gravy once rubbed through the sieve.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the gravy develop colour and a rounded flavour.
Brandy or wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished gravy when stirred in at the end.

The step that matters

Simmering the veal gently. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the gravy clear; a hard boil toughens the muscle fibres and makes the liquid cloudy, while the covered paper limits evaporation.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, clove, garlic, onion, carrot, mushroom, lettuce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, garlic, onion, carrot, mushroom, lettuce. 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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