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Roast Veal

A roasted veal leg filled with a breadcrumb and herb dressing, served with a browned flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Fill the cavity of the veal leg with a dressing made of bread, salt, pepper, and sage.

Roast

  1. Bake the veal slowly for 2 to 3 hours, basting frequently.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. After removing the meat, make gravy by adding 2 tablespoons of browned flour mixed with cold water to the dripping pan.

  2. Strain the gravy before serving.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal leg
Forms the main cut of meat, which becomes tender with slow, moist roasting.
Bread
Soaks up juices in the dressing, keeping the stuffing moist inside the meat.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a smooth gravy.

The step that matters

Bake the veal slowly for 2 to 3 hours, basting frequently. Slow, low-heat roasting lets connective tissue break down gradually, so the meat stays tender instead of drying out. Frequent basting adds moisture to the surface and helps keep it from drying.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, pepper, flour):

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, pepper, 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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