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Stuffed Fillet of Veal with Bacon

A veal fillet stuffed with breadcrumbs, pork, parsley, spices, and bacon, boiled then baked and served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Stuffed Fillet of Veal with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the bone from the veal and shape it into a round with skewers. Bind securely with soft twine.

  2. Fill the cavity with a mixture of breadcrumbs, chopped pork, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  3. Cover the top with thin slices of bacon or salt pork, tying them in place with twine.

Cook and coat

  1. Place the fillet in a pot with boiling water and cook slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Remove from the pot and place in a dripping pan. Undo the twine.

  3. Brush the meat with raw egg and coat thickly with rolled crackers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes, basting often with gravy from the pot.

  2. Once browned, serve on a hot dish with the pork around it.

  3. Strain and thicken the gravy to serve in a boat.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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 fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked slowly until tender.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices in the filling, helping keep the stuffing moist and binding it together.
Raw egg
Binds the cracker coating to the meat so it adheres during baking.
Chopped pork
Adds fat and flavour to the stuffing, keeping it moist as it cooks.
Rolled crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside during baking.
Bacon or salt pork
Covers the top, adding fat that bastes the meat and adds savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Cook slowly in boiling water. Veal is lean and dries out easily. Gentle, prolonged cooking keeps the connective tissue tender and the meat moist, while the later oven step browns the crust.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, parsley, pepper, 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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