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Roast Fillet of Veal a l’Anglaise

A roast veal fillet stuffed with suet, herbs, and breadcrumbs, served with butter sauce and Espagnol sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roast Fillet of Veal a l’Anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut off the knuckle from a leg of veal just above the projection.

  2. Remove the central bone from the leg.

  3. In a bowl, mix suet, parsley, thyme, bread crumbs, white pepper, and salt.

  4. Add 2-3 eggs to form a paste and place it in the center where the bone was removed.

  5. Cover the stuffing with buttered paper and secure it with wooden skewers.

  6. Tie the fillet neatly with string.

Roast and serve

  1. Roast it for 2.5 to 3 hours, keeping it away from the fire.

  2. Serve with a small ham or streaky bacon, removing all string before serving.

  3. Pour butter sauce over the top and Espagnol sauce around it before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 joint, providing the meat that is roasted and served.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the suet and eggs, giving the stuffing a body that holds together.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing into a paste so it holds its shape in the cavity.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich during roasting.

The step that matters

Keeping the roast away from the fire. Veal is lean and delicate, so intense direct heat can dry and toughen the outside before the centre cooks through. Gentle, indirect heat over a long roast lets the stuffing and meat cook evenly and stay moist.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, lemon, thyme, bread, egg, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, lemon, thyme, bread, egg, butter. 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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