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Veal

A veal dish braised with bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, mace, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,015 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal into neat pieces.

  2. Fry the veal in butter until browned on both sides.

Braise

  1. Add bacon, carrots, onions, herbs, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Pour in enough boiling stock or water to barely cover the ingredients.

  3. Simmer gently until the meat is cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the meat.

  2. Skim the sauce.

  3. Strain the sauce.

  4. Boil the sauce quickly to reduce it.

  5. Add sugar browning and optional tomato sauce and ketchup for flavor.

Serve

  1. Place the meat on a dish.

  2. Trim the carrots.

  3. Arrange them around the meat.

  4. Pour some gravy over the veal.

  5. Serve the rest in a tureen.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Veal + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,015 recipes

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

  2. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,916 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it simmers slowly in liquid.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the veal surface and adds richness.
Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the braising liquid.
Sugar browning
Darkens the sauce and adds a subtle caramel sweetness.
Carrots
Release sweetness into the braising liquid and add body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Fry the veal until browned on both sides. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, crowded meat steams instead, leaving the sauce flat and grey, so fry in batches with space around each piece.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, carrot, clove, mace, pepper, sugar):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, carrot, clove, mace, pepper, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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