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Preserve

Boiling and Roasting Meat

A method for boiling and roasting a leg of veal or other meat with flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiling and Roasting Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the meat

  1. Place the veal in cold water to prevent lumps.

  2. When the water begins to foam, skim it off and cover the pot.

  3. Boil the veal slowly in plenty of water for 3.5 hours.

  4. Dredge mutton or beef with flour before adding to cold water.

  5. Cover the pot and skim off any foam.

  6. Boil mutton or beef for 1 hour per 4 pounds.

Roast

  1. For roasting, add a little salt and water to the dripping pan.

  2. Dust the meat with flour and baste with fresh butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Leg of veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long slow boiling.
Flour
Dusted on the meat to help form a coating that browns during roasting.
Butter
Used for basting, adding fat that promotes browning and richness on the surface.

The step that matters

Start the meat in cold water and skim the foam. Starting in cold water lets the heat rise gradually so the proteins release slowly, reducing lumps and cloudiness. Skimming removes the coagulated protein and fat that rise as the water foams, keeping the broth clear.

“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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