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Blanquettes De Veau

Veal blanquettes are pieces of roasted veal served in a velouté sauce with yolks, verjuice, butter, parsley, and young onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Blanquettes De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Roast the shoulder of veal and cut the meat into pieces.

  2. Flatten the pieces with the blade of a knife and remove the brown skin.

  3. Mince the skin and reduce some velouté sauce.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Add the veal to the sauce without boiling it.

  2. Thicken the sauce with yolks of eggs as needed.

  3. Stir in verjuice or lemon juice and a bit of butter.

  4. Add minced parsley and young onions, then serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Shoulder of veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful after roasting and cutting.
Velouté sauce
Forms the creamy base that coats the veal and carries the other flavours.
Yolks of eggs
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich body when gently heated.
Verjuice or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a glossy finish and rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Add the veal to the sauce without boiling it. Egg yolks used to thicken the sauce can scramble if it boils, leaving it grainy and curdled instead of smooth and velvety.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sauce, egg, lemon, butter, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sauce, egg, lemon, butter, 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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