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Stuffed Breast of Veal

A breast of veal with a pocket filled with bread stuffing, sewn closed, and roasted in a pan with drippings and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,964 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Breast of Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut a pocket in the veal and wipe it clean.

  2. Fill the pocket with bread stuffing and sew it up.

  3. Place the veal in a roasting pan and rub it with drippings.

  4. Dust the veal with flour, salt, and pepper.

Roast

  1. Roast in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Add 1 cup of cold water, reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (175°C), and roast for 1 hour, adding water as needed.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the meat from the pan.

  2. In the pan, add 1 tablespoon of flour stirred into 1 tablespoon of melted butter.

  3. Boil for 3 minutes and strain the sauce.

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 + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  2. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Breast of veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked tender around the stuffing.
Flour
Dusts the surface and, stirred with butter, thickens the pan sauce.
Bread stuffing
Fills the pocket, adding moisture and flavor as the meat cooks.
Drippings
Coat the surface to add fat and help the outside brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the pan for the sauce. Flour stirred into fat must be cooked briefly and blended smoothly, otherwise it forms lumps and tastes raw. Boiling afterward lets the starch thicken fully.

“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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