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To Roast Veal

Roasted veal seasoned with coarse sea salt and black pepper, basted with butter and flour, cooked in a hot oven or Dutch oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Roast Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Rinse the veal in cold water and remove any blood.

  2. Mix ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and ¼ teaspoon of black pepper for each pound of meat.

  3. Wipe the meat dry and rub the seasoning into every part.

  4. Shape the meat neatly and fasten it with skewers.

  5. Place it on a spit, trivet, or muffin rings in a pan.

Roast

  1. Dot the upper surface with bits of butter and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Add 1 pint of water to the pan for basting.

  3. Roast in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) or in a Dutch oven.

  4. Baste occasionally and turn if necessary to ensure even cooking.

  5. If the water evaporates, add more to prevent burning.

  6. Roast for 15 minutes per pound; a 4-5 pound piece will take 1 to 1.25 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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, and its lean muscle is cooked through by dry oven heat.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown as it roasts.
Flour
Sprinkled on the surface, it helps the outer layer brown and form a richer crust.
Water
Added to the pan for basting, it creates moisture that keeps the meat from drying and burning.

The step that matters

Baste and check the pan water. Lean veal dries out and scorches easily in a hot oven. Basting keeps the surface moist, and topping up evaporated water keeps the pan from burning.

“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 roasted veal recipes

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