Skip to main content
Main

Veal, Italian

A veal roll made with bread, onion, bay leaf, spices, boiled, served with gravy and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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, Italian

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the veal in a mortar with the boiled fat or bacon.

  2. Boil the French roll with the onion, bay leaf, cayenne, white pepper, and salt in milk.

  3. Drain the milk, remove the bay leaf, and pass the veal and bread through a coarse sieve.

Form and cook the rolls

  1. Mix in the beaten egg and form into rolls, dusting with flour.

  2. Boil the rolls in separate floured cloths for 10 to 12 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with gravy and a little lemon juice.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White pepper + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Forms the main body of the rolls, giving them a tender, meaty texture.
Boiled fat or bacon
Adds moisture and richness so the rolls stay juicy when cooked.
French roll
Bread soaked in milk adds body and helps bind the mixture.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the rolls hold their shape during boiling.

The step that matters

Boil the rolls in floured cloths. Wrapping the rolls in floured cloths helps them keep their shape while boiling. If the cloths are loose or the water boils too hard, the rolls can break apart or cook unevenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, pepper, egg, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, pepper, egg, flour, lemon. 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 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes