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Veal Stew

A hearty stew of veal cubes simmered with onion, celery, and bay leaf, finished with a thickening dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Dust the veal cubes thickly with flour.

  2. In a hot kettle, melt the suet until rendered, then remove the cracklings.

  3. Add the veal to the kettle and stir lightly until browned.

Simmer the stew

  1. Pour in the water and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the onion, bay leaf, celery, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and simmer for one hour.

Add the dumplings

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, then moisten with milk or water to form a stiff dough.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the dough over the stew, cover, and cook for ten minutes without lifting the lid.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Suet
Adds fat for browning the veal and carries flavor through the stew.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the stew and forms the structure of the dumplings.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the dumplings rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Cover and leave the dumplings alone. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the dumplings cook unevenly and may not rise and set properly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, celery, pepper, flour, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, celery, pepper, flour, milk. 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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