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Breast, Stewed

A stew of veal breast with bacon, butter, onions, carrots, turnip, green onions, parsley, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Breast, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, cook the diced bacon over medium heat.

  2. Add the butter and sliced onions; cook until melted.

  3. Add the veal breast, turning until golden on both sides.

  4. Stir in the carrots, green onions, parsley, turnip, salt, and pepper.

  5. Pour in the warm water and simmer for about 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Strain the juice into a dish, place the meat on top, and serve.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow simmering.
Bacon
Renders fat into the pan, adding savoury flavour for browning the veal and vegetables.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building a flavourful base for the stew liquid.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the veal brown and carrying flavour through the dish.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stewing liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Browning the veal breast. Turning the veal until golden on both sides builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added without browning gives a flatter, less savoury stew.

Swap the onion

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

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

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