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Veal a LA Bourgeoise

Veal a la Bourgeoise is a braised veal dish with bacon, flour, stock, eggs, and béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal a LA Bourgeoise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut veal into thick slices and lard them with bacon.

  2. Season with kitchen pepper and chopped parsley.

  3. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with slices of fat bacon and lay the veal on top.

Braise

  1. Cover the pan and heat over low heat for 8-10 minutes.

  2. Increase heat and brown the veal on both sides, then sprinkle flour over it.

  3. Add 1 quart of veal stock, cover, and stew gently until cooked through.

  4. Remove bacon slices and skim off excess fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix 2 beaten eggs and 1 tablespoon of béchamel sauce into the gravy, stirring until smooth and thick.

  2. Serve the sauce over the veal.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Main protein that becomes tender as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour to the pan and to the veal.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as it mixes with the browned fat.
Veal stock
Cooks the veal gently and forms the base of the gravy.
Eggs
Thicken the gravy as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creaminess and body to the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the gravy. Egg proteins thicken the gravy by setting with heat. If the gravy is too hot or boiling, the eggs can curdle into lumps, so keep it below a simmer while stirring.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, flour, egg, sauce. 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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