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Veal Birds

Veal Birds are thin veal slices rolled with a breadcrumb and salt pork or oyster mixture, fried and simmered in milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove all skin, fat, and bone from the veal slices.

  2. Pound the veal slices.

  3. Cut the veal into pieces measuring 2 inches by 5 inches.

Make and fill the rolls

  1. Make a dressing with bread crumbs, salt pork or oysters, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Moisten the dressing with egg and a little hot water if needed.

  3. Spread the dressing on each slice of veal.

  4. Roll the slices tightly.

  5. Secure the rolls with toothpicks.

Cook and serve

  1. Dredge the rolls with flour and salt.

  2. Fry the rolls slowly in hot butter until browned.

  3. Half cover the rolls with milk.

  4. Let the rolls simmer for 20 minutes.

  5. Serve the veal birds on points of toast.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

Veal
Forms the thin wrapper that holds the dressing and browns when fried.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the dressing so it stays soft inside the roll.
Egg
Binds the dressing so it holds together when rolled and cooked.
Flour
Coats the rolls so they brown well and the surface thickens the milk sauce.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds browning and rich flavor to the rolls.
Milk
Liquid that simmers with the rolls, forming a mild sauce and keeping them moist.

The step that matters

Fry the rolls slowly in hot butter until browned. Slow frying in butter browns the flour-coated surface gradually; too much heat scorches the butter and browning before the veal is tender.

“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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