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Veal Salad

A salad of tender veal with celery, filberts, walnuts, pickles, eggs, and a mustard‑sugar‑vinegar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Veal Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal and salad base

  1. Boil the veal until tender, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Combine the veal, celery, filberts, walnuts, and pickles in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the chopped hard boiled eggs, beaten egg yolks, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and butter.

  2. Cook the dressing over low heat, stirring constantly, until thick.

  3. Add salt and cayenne pepper to the dressing.

  4. Let the mixture cool before combining it with the veal salad.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and add richness as they set during gentle cooking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sugar and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing to balance the vinegar's sharpness.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the dressing a smooth, rich texture.
Filberts
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the salad.
Veal
Forms the main body of the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the dressing over low heat. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but can scramble if the heat is too high or they are left unstirred. Constant stirring over low heat keeps the dressing smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the filbert

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, celery, walnut, egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, celery, walnut, egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar. 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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