Name: Veal Rolls
Ingredients: 10-12 thin slices of veal; force meat (to taste); 2 egg yolks; flour (for dusting); butter (for basting); gravy (with mushrooms and truffles); lemon (for garnish)

Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

Lay the force meat on each slice of veal.
Roll up the slices and tie them with coarse thread.
Place the rolls on a spit.
Rub the rolls with egg yolks and dust with flour.

Cook and serve

Baste with butter and cook for 30 minutes.
Serve on a dish with gravy, mushrooms, and truffles, garnished with lemon.

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.

Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together815 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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: Forms the main body of each roll, wrapped around the filling as it cooks.
Force meat: Adds richness and moisture to the centre of each roll as it cooks.
Egg yolks: Brush over the rolls to help the flour coating brown and stick.
Flour: Dusted on the egg-coated rolls to help form a browned outer crust.
Butter: Basted over the rolls to add fat, moisture and golden browning.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, meat, egg, flour, butter, mushroom, truffle):

Lemonthe original
Coconutfits about as well
Pumpkinfits less well
Red currantfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, meat, egg, flour, butter, mushroom, truffle. 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.