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Blanquette of Veal or Rabbit

A veal or rabbit stew finished with a creamy sauce of butter, flour, yolks, and cream, garnished with chopped ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Place the veal in a stewpan with the onions, cloves, herbs, and Liebig extract.

  2. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil, then skim off any foam.

  3. Cook gently for 1½ hours.

  4. Strain the liquid and place the meat on a hot dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Add 1 pint of the strained liquid to the butter and flour mixture.

  3. Mix the yolks and cream together, then add to the sauce.

  4. Cook the sauce gently, but do not boil after adding the yolks.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the meat and garnish with chopped ham.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 main meat, which becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavour and giving the sauce richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and the strained cooking liquid.
Yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they set gently, giving it a smooth body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil the sauce after adding the yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but boiling causes them to scramble, leaving the sauce grainy and curdled instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, butter, cream, ham, onion, 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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