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Veal, Breast Of, Boiled

Boiled veal breast served with sweetbread, parsley, peppercorns, mace, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and onion 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 ↓

Veal, Breast Of, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbread in water for 2 hours.

  2. Skewer the sweetbread to the veal.

Cook

  1. Place in a saucepan and cover with boiling water.

  2. Bring to a boil, removing any scum that rises.

  3. Add parsley, peppercorns, mace, and salt.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer gently for about 1.5 hours until done.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish with onion or parsley sauce.

  2. Serve boiled bacon on a separate dish.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Forms the main meat, becoming tender and moist during long gentle simmering.
Sweetbread
Adds a soft, delicate texture and rich flavour to the boiled meat.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after boiling. Once the water reaches a boil, lowering the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the meat tender. A hard, rolling boil toughens muscle proteins and can break the meat apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

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