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Veal Birds

Veal strips rolled in bacon, simmered in water, thickened with flour to make a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Cut the veal steak into strips 2 inches wide and pound them slightly.

  2. Sprinkle the strips with salt and pepper, then roll them into little rolls.

  3. Wrap a slice of bacon around each roll and secure with a skewer or toothpick.

  4. Brown the rolls on all sides in a skillet.

Simmer and make the gravy

  1. Cover the meat with water and let it simmer for 1.5 hours.

  2. Mix the flour with a little water to make a paste, then add it to the cooking liquid to create a gravy.

  3. Cook the meat in the gravy for about 10 minutes.

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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steak
Forms the main meat that becomes tender during the long simmer.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the veal as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the rolls on all sides. Browning creates flavorful Maillard compounds on the surface before the liquid goes in. Skipping or rushing this leaves the gravy and meat tasting flat.

“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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