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Veal Ragout

A stew of veal with brown sauce, lard, onions, carrots, herbs, spices, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Veal Ragout

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine veal pieces with brown sauce, lard, onions, carrots, sweet herbs, salt, pepper, bay leaves, cloves, and garlic in a stewpan.

  2. Add enough cold water to just cover the meat.

  3. Cover the stewpan and cook over gentle heat until the meat is tender.

  4. If the sauce is too thin, thicken it with a little flour.

  5. Before serving, stir in a little vinegar.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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 stew and becomes tender through slow, gentle cooking.
Brown sauce
Provides the rich, savoury base that flavours the ragout.
Lard
Adds fat that carries flavour and gives the sauce a richer mouthfeel.
Onions
Break down during cooking to add sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when it is too thin.
Vinegar
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over gentle heat until the meat is tender. Gentle, covered cooking lets collagen in the veal slowly break down into gelatin, making the meat tender and the sauce silky. Strong heat can toughen the meat and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sauce, onion, carrot, pepper, garlic, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cuminfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sauce, onion, carrot, pepper, garlic, 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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