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Veal Birds

Veal Birds are veal slices rolled with bacon and breadcrumbs, browned, simmered in milk or cream, and served on toast with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the bone, skin, and fat from the veal.

  2. Pound the veal to ½ inch thick.

  3. Cut the veal into pieces 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the fat and bacon and mix them with an equal amount of bread crumbs.

  2. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning.

  3. Moisten the filling with water, egg, or milk.

  4. Spread the moistened filling on the veal slices.

Roll, brown and simmer

  1. Roll the veal slices and tie the rolls with string.

  2. Coat the rolls in flour.

  3. Brown the rolls in a little butter.

  4. Place the browned rolls in a saucepan and cover them with milk or cream.

  5. Simmer until tender.

  6. Remove the strings from the rolls.

Serve

  1. Serve the rolls on toast, garnished with lemon pieces.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. 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
Forms the tender outer wrapping that encloses the filling and cooks gently in the simmering liquid.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the moistening liquid and fat, giving the filling a soft, cohesive texture.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the filling, keeping it moist during simmering.
Flour
Coats the rolls so they brown evenly in butter and help thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter
Browns the outside of the rolls, adding colour and a rich, nutty flavour.
Milk or cream
Simmers the rolls gently, providing moisture and a creamy, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender. Veal is lean and can toughen if boiled hard. A gentle, low simmer breaks down connective tissue slowly, keeping the rolls moist and tender while the milk or cream stays smooth rather than curdling.

“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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