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Veal with Asparagus Tips

A veal dish with asparagus tips, butter, egg yolks, and milk, cooked briefly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal with Asparagus Tips

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Rub the egg yolks and butter to a paste.

  2. Heat the paste with the milk in a chafing dish, stirring until blended.

Finish and cook

  1. Add the veal and asparagus, then season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cook for 5 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Asparagus + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Asparagus + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,026 recipes

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

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, tender and savory, forming the body of the dish.
Asparagus tips
Adds tender texture and a fresh, green vegetable flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel in the sauce.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds creaminess.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolk and milk mixture. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Heat gently and stir constantly so the sauce stays smooth and cohesive.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, asparagus, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, asparagus, butter, egg, milk. 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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