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Gravy, Veal, for White Sauce

A white veal gravy made with ham, veal, broth, onion, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gravy, Veal, for White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the ham at the bottom of a saucepan with the veal pieces.

  2. Cover with ½ cup of broth and boil quickly at first, then gently until the meat glazes.

  3. Pierce the meat with a skewer and shake the pan frequently to prevent burning.

  4. Once the glaze is lightly brown, gradually add 2 pints of broth.

  5. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

  6. For flavor, add an onion and parsley while simmering, if desired.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  3. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  4. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

  5. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal neck or knuckle
Provides the meat and collagen that enrich the broth as it simmers.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty depth and browns onto the bottom of the pan to flavor the sauce.
Broth
Forms the liquid base that becomes the sauce as it reduces and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the glaze before adding broth. Meat must brown lightly in the pan's residue without burning; this builds deep flavor through browning reactions. Shaking the pan and piercing the meat prevent scorching, and adding the broth too early would stop the glaze from forming.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, parsley. 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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