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Breast of Veal Stewed White

A veal breast stuffed with sweetbread and bread mixture, served with a sauce of oysters, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Breast of Veal Stewed White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Cut a piece off each end of the veal breast.

  2. Boil the sweetbread, then chop it finely.

  3. In a bowl, mix the sweetbread, grated bread, beef suet, eggs, milk, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

Stuff and cook the veal

  1. Stuff the thin part of the veal breast with the mixture.

  2. Form the remaining mixture into small balls and fry them.

  3. Skewer the skin of the veal breast closed, dust with flour, and boil it in a cloth in a mixture of milk and water.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, use the cut-off ends of the veal, add oysters, lemon juice, and butter rolled in flour.

  2. Once the veal is cooked, place it on a dish, garnish with the fried balls, and pour the sauce over 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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 dish, becoming tender as it is slowly boiled.
Sweetbread
Adds a soft, tender texture to the stuffing once boiled and chopped.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing mixture so it holds together when fried or stuffed.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat, adding richness and smoothness when rolled in flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy and lightly coats the veal before boiling.

The step that matters

Skewering the veal skin closed before boiling. If the skin is not sealed tightly, the stuffing can escape during boiling. Proper sealing keeps the filling moist and contained while the meat cooks through gently in liquid.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, beef, egg, milk, pepper, oyster):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, beef, egg, milk, pepper, oyster. 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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