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Blanquette of Veal

A veal dish simmered in a white sauce with lemon, nutmeg, and cayenne, finished with a custard-like egg‑cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Soak the veal pieces in a bowl of vinegar and water for 1 hour to draw out the blood.

  2. Simmer the veal gently for about 1 hour and 30 minutes until very tender.

  3. Remove the veal and strain the broth.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white roux and stir in the boiling broth until thickened.

  2. Add lemon juice, nutmeg, salt, and cayenne to the sauce.

  3. Return the veal to the sauce and let it stew gently over boiling water for 30 minutes.

  4. Dish the meat neatly and bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the cream.

  6. Pour some hot sauce gently into the egg mixture, then stir it into the boiling sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the veal and garnish with croutons, sliced lemon, and parsley. Serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the tender meat that the sauce is built around, cooked slowly until soft.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth, velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, softening the sauce's flavor and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolk mixture into the sauce. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot too fast. Adding hot sauce gradually to the yolk and cream mixture tempers them, so the sauce thickens smoothly without curdling.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, vinegar, lemon, pepper, egg, cream, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, vinegar, lemon, pepper, egg, cream, 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.

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