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Blanquette of Veal

A veal stew with carrots, onion, herbs, thickened with white sauce, finished with egg yolk and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Wash the veal and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Place the veal in a stew pan and cover with water.

  3. Add the carrots, onion, parsley, cloves, bay leaf, and peppercorns tied in cheesecloth.

  4. Cover and simmer until the meat is tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Thicken the stock by adding the thick white sauce.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the egg yolk and lemon juice.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 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
Becomes tender through slow simmering, forming the main body of the stew.
Thick white sauce
Thickens the stock into a smooth, coating sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a velvety texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and lemon juice. Egg yolk thickens when heated, but if the sauce boils after it is added, the yolk can scramble and curdle. Stirring it in just before serving, off a hard boil, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, parsley, clove, sauce, egg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, parsley, clove, sauce, egg, lemon. 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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