Skip to main content
Main

French Stew Op Veal

A French stew made with veal, eggs, allspice, butter, mace, pepper, flour, wine, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

French Stew Op Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal in enough water to cover it, adding salt to taste.

  2. Once the veal is tender, pour off the cooking water and save it.

  3. Cut the veal into small pieces and place it in a pan with the reserved cooking water.

Make the stew

  1. Add the chopped hard boiled eggs, crushed allspice, butter, mace, pepper, and additional salt to taste.

  2. Mix the flour smoothly with a little water and pour it into the pan.

  3. Set the pan over heat and let it boil for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Pour in the wine and serve hot.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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 knuckle
Provides the main meat and, when simmered, rich gelatin that gives body to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and a silky, rich mouthfeel to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Hard boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture that thickens the stew slightly.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that balances the richness of the butter and veal.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour with water before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps into lumps that do not dissolve. Mixing it smoothly with a little cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly so it thickens the stew without lumps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, allspice, butter, pepper, flour, wine. 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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes