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Rolled Veal

A veal fillet rolled with sausage meat, baked in a white sauce made from stock, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Rolled Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the stock (or water), onion, mace, salt, and pepper in a saucepan and boil gently for 30 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan. Gradually stir in the flour until well mixed.

  3. Add the stock gradually, bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour in enough milk to make the sauce white and slightly thinner.

  5. Strain the sauce and set aside.

Prepare the veal

  1. Spread the fillet of veal on a board.

  2. Cover it with sausage meat.

  3. Roll it up and secure with tape.

  4. Fry the rolled veal in clarified dripping for 10 minutes without browning.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the veal in a stewpan.

  2. Cover with the prepared sauce.

  3. Cook gently in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours.

  4. Remove the tape when ready.

  5. Place the veal on a hot dish.

  6. Add parsley to the sauce.

  7. Pour the sauce over the veal.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Fillet of veal
Forms the main meat that is rolled and slowly cooked until tender.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savoury flavour that runs into the veal as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavour into the roux.
Milk
Lightens the sauce to a white colour and a slightly thinner consistency.

The step that matters

Frying without browning. Browning the rolled veal would add colour and a roasted flavour that clashes with the white sauce. Keeping the heat gentle sears the surface only lightly, so the sauce stays pale and the meat stays tender during the long gentle bake.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, butter, flour, milk, sauce):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, butter, flour, milk, sauce. 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.

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