Skip to main content
Main

Veal, Kebobbed

Thin slices of veal are seasoned, skewered with onion and pickled pork, fried or roasted, and served with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal, Kebobbed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal into thin slices about 1.5 inches in diameter and ¼ inch thick.

  2. Season each slice with pepper, coarse sea salt, powdered mace, and a little turmeric.

  3. Skewer the veal alternately with thin slices of onion and pickled pork.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the skewers in butter until cooked, or roast them over a clear fire, basting liberally.

  2. Drain the skewers and serve on a hot dish garnished with fried parsley.

  3. If desired, stew the fried veal in curry or gravy flavored with lemon juice, and serve with dry rice.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Turmeric + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together752 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Turmeric + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Lean veal
Provides the main meat, which cooks to tender, juicy slices on the skewer.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory fat that flavors the meat and keeps the skewer moist as it cooks.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat, helping the surfaces brown and taste rich.
Onion
Adds sweetness and moisture between the meat pieces as the skewer cooks.

The step that matters

Frying or roasting the skewers. Thin veal cooks quickly and dries out if overcooked. Basting with fat keeps the surface moist while it browns, and the meat needs to be cooked through before serving.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, turmeric, onion, pork, butter, parsley. 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 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes