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Veal Stew Piquante

A veal stew flavored with cucumber, lettuce, and optional peas, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Stew Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Season the veal with salt and pepper, then dust with flour.

  2. In a pan, heat the butter or dripping and fry the veal until lightly browned.

Make the stew

  1. Add the cucumber and lettuce to the pan, turning to prevent burning.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and cover with boiling stock or water.

  3. If in season, add freshly-shelled green peas during cooking for extra flavor.

  4. Simmer gently for 1 hour or until the veal is tender.

  5. Add a few drops of lemon juice before serving 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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cucumber + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Becomes tender during slow simmering and browns lightly when fried, adding savoury flavour.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns in the fat and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter or clarified dripping
Fat for frying that browns the veal and carries flavour into the stew.
Cucumber
Softens during cooking, contributing a mild, fresh flavour and moisture to the stew.
Lettuce
Wilts into the liquid, adding moisture and a soft, mild vegetable body.

The step that matters

Frying the veal until lightly browned. Browning the floured meat in fat builds flavour through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or overheating can steam the meat or scorch the flour instead, so brown in batches over moderate heat.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, flour, butter, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, flour, butter, lemon. 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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