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Braised Veal

Braised veal simmered in sweet dripping, broth, onion, tomatoes, and seasonings, finished with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Braised Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the veal

  1. Heat the sweet dripping in a broad saucepan.

  2. Add the veal and fry on both sides until browned.

  3. Pour in the broth, onion, and tomatoes, then cover.

  4. Stew for 45 minutes.

  5. Remove the veal and keep it warm.

Make the gravy

  1. Strain the gravy and skim it.

  2. Return the gravy to the pot.

  3. Add pepper, salt, summer savory, mace, sugar, and lemon peel.

  4. Return the veal to the pot and stew for another 30 minutes.

  5. Transfer the veal to a dish.

  6. Thicken the gravy and boil it once.

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

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

  2. Summer savory + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together115 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Sweet dripping
Fat for frying the veal, adding richness and browning the surface.
Broth
Liquid that stews the veal and forms the base of the gravy.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the gravy as they break down during stewing.
Onion
Adds savory depth and sweetness to the gravy as it softens.

The step that matters

Frying the veal until browned. Browning creates flavorful surface compounds through the Maillard reaction. Pat the veal dry and use enough hot fat so it browns rather than steams, which keeps the gravy rich.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, tomato, pepper, summer savory, sugar, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, tomato, pepper, summer savory, sugar, 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.

More braised veal recipes

Neck 27Fillet 11Breast 10Cutlets 4Neck with Oyster Sauce 3Shoulder 3 See all 22 →

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