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Roast Veal

Roast veal with a bread and egg dressing, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roast Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the veal

  1. Wash and dry the veal roast.

  2. In a pan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of lard or drippings. Once hot, add the meat and dredge with 3 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Sprinkle 1 heaping tablespoon of coarse sea salt and 1 heaping teaspoon of black pepper over the meat.

Roast the meat

  1. Place in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. After 1 hour, add 1 pint of hot water and bake for 1 more hour.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, melt 1 heaping tablespoon of butter in a frying pan. Add the dry bread and stir for 5 minutes.

  2. Mix in 1 teaspoon of salt, ½ teaspoon of black pepper, 1 teaspoon of sage, 2 beaten eggs, and 1 pint of milk.

  3. If the mixture is too dry, add a little water and 2 spoonfuls of gravy from the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the dressing into one end of the pan with the meat and bake for an additional 30 minutes, basting several times.

  2. Serve the meat and dressing.

  3. Make gravy by adding more flour and hot water to the pan drippings.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 roast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy during slow roasting.
Flour
Coats the meat so it browns and helps thicken the pan drippings into gravy.
Eggs
Bind the bread dressing so it holds together when baked.
Dry bread
Forms the body of the dressing, soaking up milk and eggs as it bakes.
Milk
Moistens the dressing and adds richness as it sets with the eggs.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the pan and the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the hot water after the first hour. Hot liquid added to the pan loosens the browned drippings for gravy and keeps the meat from drying out during the long roast.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, pepper, bread, egg, 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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