Skip to main content
Main

Blanquette of Veal

A veal stew with a creamy sauce made from butter, flour, and eggs, flavored with herbs and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the veal

  1. Cut the veal into 2‑inch pieces and cover with cold water.

  2. Add white pepper, salt, sweet herbs, carrot, turnip, and onion.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim off scum, and simmer for 30‑40 minutes until tender.

  4. Drain the veal and return the broth to the heat, washing the meat in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the broth, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Once the sauce boils, stir in the yolks of the eggs.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the veal and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Serve with optional mushrooms or sprinkle with parsley.

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 + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Provides the meat that becomes tender during gentle simmering.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavor and smoothness into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Veal broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savory flavor.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and thicken the sauce once it has boiled.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Once the sauce boils, yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Adding them off the heat or at low heat, while stirring, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipes