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Veau De Desserte

A veal dish simmered in a butter and flour sauce with herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Veau De Desserte

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and cook until lightly browned.

  3. Pour in the broth or water and stir to combine.

  4. Add the parsley, chives, tarragon, salt, and pepper.

  5. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the veal pieces and heat through.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together589 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Tarragon + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main protein and meaty bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Broth or water
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the sauce.
Chives
Adds mild onion-like freshness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until lightly browned. Flour must cook in the butter long enough to lose its raw starchy taste before liquid is added. Stopping too early leaves a pasty flavor, while overbrowning gives a bitter, dark sauce.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, parsley, tarragon, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivethe original
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, parsley, tarragon, pepper. 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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