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Veal Navarin

A French stew of veal with bacon, shallots, mushrooms, wine, stock, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal Navarin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Lard each piece of veal with strips of larding bacon.

  2. Melt butter in a frying pan.

  3. Add the veal and fry for a few minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the chopped shallots and mushrooms to the veal and cook together for a few minutes.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the mixture and stir.

  3. Add the wine and stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Cook gently for 30 minutes or until the veal is tender.

  5. Transfer the veal to a deep dish.

  6. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and add the cream.

  7. Stir the egg mixture into the sauce, but do not let it boil.

  8. Season with salt and pepper.

  9. Add chopped parsley.

  10. Pour over the veal and 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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together881 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 becomes tender through long, gentle cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it cooks with the fat and stock.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour and texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brightens the sauce as it simmers.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when warmed gently but scramble if they boil. Stir them in off the heat or at low heat, and never let the sauce boil afterwards, so it stays smooth and velvety.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, pepper, white wine, cream, butter, veal):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, pepper, white wine, cream, butter, veal. 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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