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Veal Stew

A hearty stew of veal, onion, carrots, turnip, and potatoes simmered in water and finished with a flour‑butter‑milk gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Cut the veal into 2‑inch pieces and cover with boiling water.

  2. Simmer until tender.

  3. Add the onion, salt, pepper, carrots, and turnip when the meat starts cooking.

  4. Twenty minutes before the meat is done, add the soaked potatoes.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables to a platter.

  2. Thicken the gravy with flour and season with butter and milk or cream.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it simmers slowly.
Potatoes
Add starch that thickens the broth slightly and gives the stew body.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that rounds out the gravy.
Milk or cream
Adds creaminess and softens the gravy's flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour must be stirred into the hot liquid in a controlled way, or it clumps. Whisking it smoothly into the liquid, then letting it simmer, lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato, flour, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato, flour, butter. 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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