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Veal Alamoue

A veal stew simmered in gravy with peas, lettuce, and browned butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Veal Alamoue

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Make 1 quart of gravy with the scrag end of the veal and strain it.

Stew the veal

  1. Put the veal pieces into a stewpan with the gravy, pepper, salt, mace, and butter.

  2. Cover the pan and let it stew for nearly 2 hours.

  3. Add the chopped lettuce.

  4. Stew for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Mix the browned butter with flour, then add it to the stew.

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. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle stewing.
Flour
Thickens the stew's liquid, giving it body when mixed with browned butter.
Green peas
Add sweetness and soft texture to the finished stew.
Lettuce
Wilts into the stew, adding soft texture and a mild vegetable flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor through the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the browned butter and flour. Flour stirred into hot liquid can clump, so it should be blended with the butter first. Once whisked in and simmered, the flour starch swells and thickens the stew evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, butter, peas, lettuce, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, butter, peas, lettuce, 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.

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