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Veau Aux Olives

A veal roll dish with olives, bread crumbs, ham, and spices, simmered in a butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Veau Aux Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the veal flank into neat strips, about 2 inches wide and 4 inches long.

  2. Pound the strips gently with a few strokes.

  3. Mix the chopped cold veal, chopped cold ham, bread crumbs, parsley, grated onion, egg, lemon juice, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  4. Place a layer of the mixture in the center of each veal strip, roll them up, and tie securely.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the rolls and cook until browned on all sides.

  3. Add enough stock to half-cover the rolls, cover tightly, and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes.

  4. Remove the rolls to a hot dish.

  5. Strain the gravy and bring it to a boil, then thicken with corn starch mixed with cold water.

  6. Stir and boil for 3 minutes, then add the olives, pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Pour the gravy over the rolls and 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 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

Veal flank
Wrapped around the filling, it becomes tender when simmered and holds the rolls together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the chopped meat and egg into a cohesive filling.
Egg
Binds the filling so it holds its shape when rolled and cooked.
Butter
Fat that browns the outside of the rolls and adds richness to the pan.
Corn starch (in the method)
Thickens the strained gravy as it boils, giving it body.

The step that matters

Simmering the covered rolls. Simmering gently in a tightly covered pan lets the connective tissue in the veal break down slowly, keeping the rolls tender. A hard boil would toughen the meat and dry the rolls out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, bread, parsley, egg, pepper, 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.

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