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Breast of Veal Roasted

A roasted veal breast, optionally wrapped in caul and sweetbread, seasoned with salt, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Veal Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cover the breast of veal with caul.

  2. If using sweetbread, skewer it to the back.

  3. Sprinkle the roast with salt.

Roast

  1. Roast the veal for 2.5 to 3 hours, removing the caul when nearly done.

Finish and serve

  1. Dredge the roast with flour before serving.

  2. Baste the roast with a small piece of fresh butter before serving.

  3. Serve with melted butter poured over the joint and gravy around it.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 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 breast
Forms the main body of the roast and carries most of the flavour and texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown and taste rich when basted.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the outside brown and thicken the pan juices for gravy.
Caul
A fatty membrane that bastes the meat while it roasts, keeping it moist.

The step that matters

Removing the caul when nearly done. Leaving the caul on too long stops the surface browning, while removing it too early loses its basting fat. Timing it near the end lets the outside brown while the meat stays moist.

“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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