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Veal Birds

Thin veal slices rolled with a seasoned pork and cracker crumb mixture, fried and simmered in cream, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Veal Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Wipe the veal slices and remove bone, skin, and fat.

  2. Pound the veal until ¼ inch thick and cut into pieces 2.5 inches long by 1.5 inches wide.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the trimmings of meat and the salt pork fat.

  2. Mix the trimmings and pork with ½ cup of fine cracker crumbs and season with salt, pepper, cayenne, poultry seasoning, lemon juice, and onion juice.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and hot water or stock.

  4. Spread a thin layer of the mixture on each piece of veal, avoiding the edges.

Roll, fry and braise

  1. Roll the veal and fasten with skewers.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, dredge with flour, and fry in hot butter until golden brown.

  3. Place in a stewpan, add cream to half cover the meat, and cook slowly for 20 minutes or until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on small pieces of toast, pouring the remaining cream over the birds and toast, and garnish with parsley.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 outer wrap and becomes tender during slow cooking in cream.
Salt pork fat
Adds fat and moisture to the filling so it stays juicy as it cooks.
Fine cracker crumbs
Absorb liquid and bind the filling so it holds together inside the roll.
Egg
Binds the filling ingredients together into a cohesive mixture.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside brown when fried.
Cream
Keeps the birds moist and forms a rich sauce during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Searing the floured surface in hot butter browns the outside through the Maillard reaction, building flavor and color before the gentle braise. Pale frying gives a flat taste and less appealing color.

Swap the onion

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

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

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