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Veal Cutlets and Celery

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets and Celery

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Divide the veal into neat cutlets and trim them.

  2. Beat the cutlets with a cutlet bat.

  3. Wash the celery and cut it into neat pieces.

  4. Put the celery in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, add a blade of mace, and boil for 10 minutes.

  5. Drain the celery and lay it at the bottom of a saucepan.

  6. Add the cutlets, salt, and pepper, then pour in enough veal stock to barely cover them.

  7. Simmer gently until the cutlets are tender.

  8. Remove the cutlets and mix them with the celery, milk or cream, and a thickening of flour and butter.

  9. Stir the sauce over the fire for 10 minutes, then pour it over the cutlets and serve immediately.

  10. Garnish with veal forcemeat balls and sliced lemon.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, celery, mace, pepper, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, celery, mace, pepper, milk, flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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