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Mock Sweet Breads

Veal cooked in salted water, then simmered in white sauce with mushrooms, lemon juice, and egg, garnished with potato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Mock Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Cook the veal in salted water with the onion until tender.

  2. Transfer the veal to cold water to whiten it.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare 1 cup of white sauce and season with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

  2. Cut the mushrooms into quarters and add them along with the veal to the sauce.

  3. Heat the mixture over boiling water until warmed through.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice and beaten egg.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with potato.

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. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender when cooked gently in water.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that coats the veal and mushrooms.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft, meaty texture to the dish.
Egg
Thickens the sauce gently when stirred in off the heat, adding richness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg off the heat. Egg proteins set at around 160°F and can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from heat before adding the beaten egg lets it thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sauce, pepper, celery, mushroom, lemon, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sauce, pepper, celery, mushroom, lemon, egg. 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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