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Roast Veal

A veal roast cooked with pickled pork, butter, flour, and a gravy of water, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Roast Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the roast

  1. Score the top of the roast and lay thin pieces of pickled pork in the scored areas.

  2. Season well with black pepper and coarse sea salt, then place small pieces of butter on top and dredge with flour.

Roast

  1. Cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned on top, then add ½ pint of boiling water and baste often.

  2. Cook the roast for 1¾ to 2 hours, adding more boiling water if necessary.

Make the gravy

  1. For gravy, after removing the roast, add ½ pint of boiling water and ½ pint of cream to the pan.

  2. Stir 2 tablespoons of flour in a little milk until smooth, then add to the water and cream while cooking.

  3. Season with black pepper and coarse sea salt, and cook thoroughly.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Butter and flour 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 roast
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking slowly to become tender and moist.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory flavor that seasons the meat as it roasts.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a richer flavor on the roast's surface.
Flour
Dredged on the roast to help the surface brown; stirred into gravy to thicken it.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the gravy. Flour mixed into liquid without being smoothed first in milk can form lumps that do not dissolve. Stirring it into a little cold milk first separates the starch granules so they disperse evenly when added to the hot liquid.

“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.

More roast veal recipes

Fillet 39Loin 30Neck 13Breast 11Pot 3Chump 3 See all 78 →

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