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Neck of Veal Stewed

A stew of veal neck with ham or bacon, shallots, spices, pepper, salt, stock, bay leaf, onions, and brandy or whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and laurel are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,666 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Neck of Veal Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Lard the neck of veal with square pieces of ham or bacon rubbed in shallots, spices, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Stew

  1. Place the veal in a stewpan with 3 pints of white stock.

  2. Add a bay leaf, 2 onions, and 2 teaspoons of brandy or whiskey.

  3. Stew until tender.

Serve

  1. Dish the meat.

  2. Strain the gravy.

  3. Pour the gravy over the joint.

  4. Serve.

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 + laureltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Laurel + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,335 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Neck of veal
Slow stewing turns its connective tissue tender and gives the meat body.
White stock
Forms the liquid that cooks the veal and becomes the gravy.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the meat as it cooks.
Onions
Release sweetness and body into the stock during the long stew.
Brandy or whiskey
Adds aromatic depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Veal neck is tough collagen-rich meat that needs long, gentle simmering, not a rapid boil. Boiling hard toughens the muscle fibres and can leave the meat stringy, while slow heat slowly converts collagen into gelatin, giving tender meat and a rich gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, shallot, pepper, laurel, brandy):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, shallot, pepper, laurel, brandy. 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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