Why it works: Biscuit and spinach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓
Veal Stew
Ingredients
Directions
Make the stew
Boil the veal in enough water to cover for 1 hour.
Add the potatoes and cook for an additional 30 minutes.
Before removing from heat, stir in the milk and enough flour to thicken.
Season to taste.
Alternatively, add the salt pork with the veal.
If not using pork, add butter to the stew before adding the dumplings.
Twenty minutes before the meat is done, drop in dumplings made of biscuit dough.
Boil gently in a tightly covered kettle for 30 minutes.
Assemble and serve
Prepare a crust like for chicken pie.
Bake the crust in 2 pie pans.
Place one crust on a platter.
Pour the stew over the crust.
Cover with the other crust.
Serve with spinach.
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.
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Biscuit + spinachtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together58 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Potato + spinachtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together646 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
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Potato + porktop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,668 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together889 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal breast
- Slow boiling turns the tough connective tissue tender and gives the stew its meaty body.
- Potatoes
- Starch thickens the broth slightly and adds bulk and a soft texture to the stew.
- Milk
- Adds creaminess and a mild sweetness that softens the stew's flavour.
- Flour
- Starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the stew into a smooth gravy.
- Biscuit dough
- Steams over the simmering stew, becoming light and soft as it cooks.
The step that matters
Thickening the stew with flour. Flour must be stirred in before removing from heat and kept moving so it hydrates evenly. Added in lumps or left to simmer unstirred, it can clump and leave the gravy grainy or thin.
Swap the spinach
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, potato, milk, flour, pork, butter, biscuit):
- Chivefits better
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Onionfits about as well
- Spinachthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, potato, milk, flour, pork, butter, biscuit. 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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