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Veal

A slow‑cooked veal stew with sweetbreads, bay leaves, mace, and a thickened sauce using browned flour and rusk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal according to the bones and wash it in cold water.

  2. Place the veal in a flat iron Dutch oven and cover it with cold water.

  3. Add one sweetbread for each person, trim and wash them, then add to the pot.

  4. Set over low heat and skim before boiling.

  5. Add 1 tablespoon of fresh butter, 6 bay leaves, and 1 blade of mace.

  6. Cover and cook for 1.5 hours.

  7. After 1 hour, remove the sweetbreads and keep warm.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Season the veal with salt and pepper to taste.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix 2 tablespoons of browned flour with 1 tablespoon of fresh butter and some of the veal liquor until smooth.

  3. Stir this mixture into the veal, then add 2 large spoonfuls of crushed double baked rusk.

  4. Gently return the sweetbreads to the pot without breaking them and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

  5. Before serving, remove the bay leaves and mace.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Veal
Provides the meat and rich liquor that forms the body of the stew.
Sweetbreads
Add a tender, delicate texture to the stew as they cook gently in the liquid.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquor into a smooth, slightly nutty sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour of the sauce.
Double baked rusk
Crushed and stirred in, it helps thicken and add body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Returning the sweetbreads gently. Sweetbreads are delicate and break apart easily when stirred or boiled hard. Returning them gently and simmering keeps them intact and tender.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

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