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Veal a LA Mode

Veal à la Mode is a braised veal dish cooked with bacon, spices, and a brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Veal a LA Mode

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Wash the veal in cold water and dry it off.

  2. Cut the outside skin to prevent curling and pound it well on both sides.

  3. Slice the bacon, remove the skin, trim the edges, and cut it into wedge-shaped pieces.

  4. Make deep incisions in the veal with a sharp knife and lard it half an inch apart.

Brown and braise

  1. In a Dutch oven, heat 2 ounces of butter until hot enough to brown.

  2. Season the veal with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the veal with flour on one side.

  4. Place the veal flour side down in the oven.

  5. Season and dredge the other side of the veal.

  6. Cover the oven and brown both sides until golden brown.

  7. Add the bay leaves and enough hot water to reach halfway up the veal.

  8. Cover the oven and cook slowly for one hour, basting often.

  9. Once done, lift the veal into a warm chafing dish.

Make the gravy

  1. Skim off some fat from the gravy.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of browned flour, ½ pint of hot water, mace, cloves, and vinegar to the gravy.

  3. Let the gravy boil for a few minutes.

  4. Stir the gravy from the bottom.

  5. Season the gravy with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Strain the gravy into a gravy dish.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow braising.
Bacon
Larding strips add fat and moisture inside the lean veal as it cooks.
Butter
Fat for browning the veal, building colour and flavour on its surface.
Browned flour
Coats the veal to brown and later thickens the gravy.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the rich fat.
Bay leaves
Contribute aromatic flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the floured veal. Flour dredged on the veal and fat in the hot Dutch oven brown through the Maillard reaction, creating colour and flavour. If the pan is not hot enough or the veal is crowded, it steams and turns pale instead of golden.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, clove, cider, vinegar, flour, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, clove, cider, vinegar, flour, pepper. 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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