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Blanquette of Veal

A veal stew with macaroni, butter, flour, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Place the veal in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Add mace, pepper, and salt; boil until tender.

  3. Remove the veal and place it in cold water to bleach.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in milk until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and flour.

  2. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the gravy.

  3. Add the veal and macaroni; bring to a boil.

  4. Serve in a deep dish, garnished with lemon.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mace + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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 through long simmering in water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body when creamed with butter and stirred in.
Macaroni
Adds starchy body and bulk, softened by simmering in milk until tender.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the gravy. Flour clumps if added raw or unevenly. Creaming it with butter first and stirring it in gradually helps it disperse smoothly, so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Sagebetter flavor fit
  3. Marjorambetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, milk, butter, flour, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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