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Veal Heart

Braised veal heart with bread crumbs, butter, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Heart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Remove tough membranes from the veal heart and soak in cold water with salt for 1 hour.

  2. Wipe the heart and stuff it with stale bread crumbs seasoned with salt, pepper, and moistened with melted butter.

  3. Rub the heart with salt and pepper, then dredge it with flour.

Braise

  1. Fry the heart until brown in a pan with a little fat salt pork.

  2. Place the heart in a braising kettle and add water, minced onion, parsley, cloves, peppercorns, and chopped carrot.

  3. Cover tightly and cook for 2 hours in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C), turning the heart 3 or 4 times while cooking.

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal heart
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long moist cooking.
Flour
Coats the surface so it browns during frying and thickens the cooking liquid slightly.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the melted butter and add body to the stuffing inside the heart.
Melted butter
Moistens the bread crumb stuffing and adds richness and flavour.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the pan when browning the heart.

The step that matters

Frying the heart until brown. Browning the floured surface creates flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale frying gives a bland braise, and frying too hot can scorch the flour before the heart is browned.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, pepper, butter, flour, pork, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, pepper, butter, flour, pork, parsley. 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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