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Veal Birds

Veal Birds are veal slices wrapped in bacon and sage, stewed in stock and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Birds

one bird per person

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover slices of veal with bacon and a sage leaf, then tie them up.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, combine white stock and heavy cream, and flavor with lemon peel, parsley, cayenne, salt, and nutmeg.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the veal birds to the pot and stew for about two hours.

  2. Serve one bird per person.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Bacon
Wraps the veal, adding fat and savory flavor as it renders into the stew.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and body to the stewing liquid, giving a smooth, silky sauce.
White stock
Forms the braising liquid that gently cooks the birds and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Stew for about two hours. Veal is a tough cut with connective tissue. A long, gentle simmer below boiling breaks that tissue down slowly, making the meat tender; a rapid boil can toughen it.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sage, cream, lemon, parsley, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sage, cream, lemon, parsley, pepper. 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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