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Veal Stew

A hearty stew of veal, onions, carrots, turnip, potatoes, and a butter‑milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the stew

  1. Cover the veal with boiling water and let it simmer until tender.

  2. Add the onion, salt, pepper, carrots, and turnip when the meat starts cooking.

  3. Twenty minutes before the meat is done, add the soaked potatoes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables to a platter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and season with butter and milk or cream.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

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

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 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
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers slowly.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy by swelling with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the gravy.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and body to the gravy, softening its flavour.
Potatoes
Add starch that soaks up flavour and thickens the stew as they cook.

The step that matters

Adding the potatoes. Potatoes soaked in cold water for an hour lose surface starch, which helps them hold their shape rather than breaking down. Adding them twenty minutes before the meat is done lets them cook through without turning mushy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato, flour, butter. 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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