Name: Bubble and Squeak of Veal
Ingredients: cold veal; hot fat for frying; boiled spinach; tomato sauce or piquant sauce

Why it works: Spinach and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,350 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Bubble and Squeak of Veal

Ingredients

cold veal
hot fat for frying
boiled spinach
tomato sauce or piquant sauce

Directions

Cut the cold veal into neat slices.
Fry the veal slices in hot fat until heated through.
Keep the fried veal warm.
Fry the boiled spinach until hot.
Pile the spinach on a dish and arrange the veal slices around it.
Serve with tomato sauce or any piquant sauce.

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.

Spinach + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,350 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Veal + tomatotop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together709 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Veal + spinachtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together261 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, tomato):

Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Carrotbetter flavor fit
Cucumberbetter flavor fit
Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, tomato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).