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To Drefs Veal Steaks

Veal steaks seasoned with spices and herbs, cooked in a dripping pan and served with a ketchup gravy, mushrooms and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 26 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Drefs Veal Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the neck of veal into steaks and chop off the ends of the bones.

  2. Flatten the bones with a cleaver and season the steaks with nutmeg, mace, cayenne pepper, lemon peel, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Rub the steaks with egg yolk and sprinkle with bread crumbs and pot marjoram.

Cook the steaks

  1. Place the steaks in a dripping pan and cook over a brisk fire, basting until light brown, about 30 minutes.

Make the gravy

  1. Make gravy from the trimmings, soft water, onion, white peppercorns, cloves, anchovy, and bay leaf or lemon peel.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Add lemon peel, nutmeg, cayenne, white ketchup, walnut ketchup, white wine, lemon pickle, butter, and flour to thicken the gravy.

Serve

  1. Lay the steaks on a dish, add pickled mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, and morels.

  2. Pour gravy over them and garnish with sliced lemon and pickles.

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. Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal neck
Forms the steaks, providing the meat that is cooked and served.
Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the steaks while cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust that browns during cooking and helps the steaks stay together.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, improving mouthfeel and flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy, balancing its richness.

The step that matters

Basting until light brown. Basting keeps the surface of the veal moist while the crumb coating browns. Too little heat or basting leaves the meat dry and pale, while too much heat can scorch the coating before the centre is cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, egg, bread, marjoram):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, nutmeg, pepper, lemon, egg, bread, marjoram. 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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