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Good Veal Stew

A slow‑cooked veal stew with dumplings made from flour, baking powder, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Good Veal Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Have the butcher crack the shank of veal.

  2. Stew the veal slowly for 2 hours.

  3. Ensure there are at least 2 quarts of broth.

  4. Season the stew with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and butter.

  5. Add the potatoes and cook for 30 minutes.

  6. If the broth reduces to less than 2 quarts, add boiling water.

Make and steam the dumplings

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Wet the mixture with milk to form a stiff batter.

  3. Dip a spoon in the boiling broth, then take a spoonful of batter and plunge it in.

  4. Cover tightly and steam the dumplings for 20 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 shank
Provides rich meat and gelatin-rich flavor as it stews slowly.
Broth
Forms the cooking liquid that flavors the stew and cooks the dumplings.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dumplings as it sets with the liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the dumplings rise and turn light.
Potatoes
Absorb stew flavor and thicken the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Plunging the batter into boiling broth. The broth must be at a full boil when the batter goes in, so the dumplings set quickly on the outside. Lowering the heat or covering too early can make them dense or gummy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, butter, flour, milk. 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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