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Pot Roast of Veal

A slow‑cooked veal roast with butter, sour cream, and seasonings, finished in a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Pot Roast of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the veal

  1. Brown the butter in a kettle.

  2. Add the veal and brown it well on all sides, being careful not to burn it.

  3. Stir in the sour cream and turn the meat until the cream is thoroughly browned.

Braise

  1. Add salt, bay leaf, pepper, and enough water to cover the meat.

  2. Simmer for about two hours until the meat is tender.

  3. Let the water reduce almost completely, then remove the meat.

Make the gravy

  1. Add more water and flour to the remaining liquid to thicken the gravy, then strain.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Lean meat that becomes tender after long, slow simmering in liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the meat and gives a rich flavor.
Sour cream
Browns in the pan and adds richness and a tangy flavor to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the remaining cooking liquid into a gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the veal without burning it. Browned surfaces build deep, savory flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched butter and dairy turn bitter. Keep the heat moderate and turn the meat often so it browns evenly.

“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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