Name: Veal Cutlets, Farce of
Ingredients: cutlets of veal (even thickness); good veal forcemeat; thin slices of fat bacon; butter; sliced vegetables (carrot, turnip, onions, celery); stock

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Veal Cutlets, Farce of

Ingredients

Directions

Trim and flatten the veal cutlets.
Spread a layer of veal forcemeat over each cutlet.
Roll the cutlet around the bone and cover with a slice of bacon.
Bind with twine to secure the forcemeat.
Butter a stewpan and layer sliced vegetables in the bottom.
Place the stuffed cutlets on the vegetables and add enough stock to half cover them.
Simmer gently until tender, about two hours.
Remove cutlets, arrange them on a dish, strain the gravy over, and serve hot.

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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,418 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, carrot, turnip, celery):

Leekfits better
Parsnipfits better
Lettucefits about as well
Onionthe original

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