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A Breast of Veal in Hodge-podge

A stew of veal, peas, lettuce, and spices cooked in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Breast of Veal in Hodge-podge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal breast into small pieces and separate the bones.

  2. Flour the veal pieces and heat the butter in a stew pan.

  3. Add the floured veal to the hot butter and fry until light brown.

Stew

  1. Pour boiling water into the pan to cover the veal and stir.

  2. Add the green peas, whole lettuce, mace, whole pepper in a muslin bag, sweet herbs, and the clove-studded onion.

  3. Cover and let it stew for 1 hour or until cooked to your liking.

  4. For a sauce, stew until there is just enough liquid; season with salt to taste.

  5. Remove the onion, sweet herbs, and spices, then pour the mixture into a serving dish.

  6. If using cucumbers, scoop out the pulp and cut into thin pieces; add chopped celery if desired.

  7. For a fine presentation, stuff the lettuce with forcemeat, tie it closed, and stew until just enough sauce remains.

Serve

  1. Place the stuffed lettuce in the center of the dish with the veal arranged around it.

  2. Pour the sauce over the veal and garnish with figures made from rasped bread.

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. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing in liquid.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns in the butter and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Carries the frying of the veal and adds richness to the sauce.
Green peas
Add sweetness and color to the stew.
Lettuce
Becomes tender through stewing and can be stuffed with forcemeat.

The step that matters

Frying the floured veal until light brown. Flour and butter browning builds flavor and color in the pan, and the flour coating helps the sauce thicken later. Pale or greasy frying leaves the stew bland and thin.

Swap the lettuce

The recipe marks lettuce as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, butter, peas, mace, pepper, onion):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter, peas, mace, pepper, onion. 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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