Skip to main content
Main

Veal, Fillet Of, Boiled

A veal fillet is boiled with forcemeat stuffing, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, lemon juice, and sherry, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal, Fillet Of, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the bone from the fillet and fill the space with veal forcemeat.

  2. Bind the meat securely with tape.

  3. Place a few skewers at the bottom of a stewpan to prevent sticking.

  4. Lay the fillet on the skewers.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour enough cold weak stock, milk, and water (or just water) to barely cover the fillet.

  2. Heat slowly and simmer gently for about three hours, skimming off any scum that rises.

  3. Once cooked, transfer the fillet to a hot dish and garnish with lemon.

  4. Serve with oyster, celery, or white sauce, or a thickened sauce made from the cooking stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, lemon juice, and sherry.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + sherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently to stay tender and moist.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the boned space, giving the fillet a firm, even, sliceable centre.
Stock, milk, and water
Gently poaching liquid that cooks the meat slowly and keeps it moist.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and skim. A rolling boil toughens meat proteins and churns the surface, while gentle simmering keeps the fillet tender. Skimming removes scum, keeping the cooking liquid clean for the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, lemon, sherry, milk, oyster):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, sherry, milk, oyster. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes