Name: Veal Rolls
Ingredients: thin slices of veal; forcemeat (seasoned); coarse thread; 2 egg yolks (beaten); flour; butter; gravy (with chopped truffles and mushrooms)

Why it works: Truffle and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

Cut the veal into neat, thin slices.
Place a spoonful of seasoned forcemeat on each slice and roll them tightly.
Tie each roll with coarse thread.

Coat and cook

Dip the rolls in beaten egg yolks and coat them with flour.
Baste the rolls with butter and cook on a spit for 30 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

Prepare a gravy with chopped truffles and mushrooms.
Serve the rolls and pour the gravy around them.

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.

Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together815 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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: Thin slices wrap the filling and form the tender meat of each roll.
Forcemeat: Seasoned filling that adds moisture and flavour inside each roll.
Egg yolks: Beaten yolks help the flour coating adhere and encourage golden browning.
Flour: Forms a dry coating that helps the outside set and brown during cooking.
Butter: Basting adds fat that promotes browning and moisture on the rolls' surface.

“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.