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Veal with Green Peas and Dumplings

A veal dish simmered with green peas and dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal with Green Peas and Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Rub the veal with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a kettle, add the veal, and turn it once.

Make the dumplings

  1. Add 1 cup of stock and stir 3 tablespoons of flour smooth in water, then add this slowly to the liquid. Let it boil.

  2. In a bowl, stir together 1 tablespoon of butter, 2 eggs, salt, and enough bread crumbs to make a light dough.

  3. Shape small round dumplings from the dough and add them to the boiling liquid.

  4. Sprinkle ½ cup of green peas over the dumplings and let boil for a few minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover the kettle and cook in a Caloric oven with one hot stone underneath for 1½ to 2 hours.

  2. Before serving, slice the meat and pour the peas and dumplings over it.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Is the main protein; slow moist cooking in liquid makes it tender.
Eggs
Bind the dumpling dough so it holds its shape while simmering.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich liquid.
Bread crumbs
Give the dumpling dough body so it stays light rather than sticky.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, tender vegetable element to the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into water before adding it to the stock. Flour dropped directly into hot liquid clumps as its starch surface gelatinizes unevenly. Smoothing it in cold water first lets the starch disperse so the sauce thickens evenly.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper, flour, egg, milk, bread. 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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