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To Roast Fillet of Veal or Hare

A veal or hare fillet stuffed with a suet and herb mixture, then roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Roast Fillet of Veal or Hare

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

  1. In a bowl, combine the beef suet, parsley, thyme, shallots, basil, lemon peel, nutmeg, eggs (or milk), pepper, salt, and anchovy.

  2. Pound the mixture until well combined and rub it through a sieve.

Roast and serve

  1. Stuff the fillet of veal or hare with the prepared stuffing.

  2. Roast the meat in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

  3. Serve with melted butter or white oyster sauce.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat that melts during roasting, keeping the stuffing moist and rich.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when sliced.
Shallots
Add a mild, savoury onion flavour to the stuffing.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth, mostly unnoticed as a fishy taste.

The step that matters

Roast the meat until cooked through. Veal is lean, so overcooking dries it out, while undercooking leaves it unsafe. The stuffing also needs the meat heated through so the eggs set and the filling holds together.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, parsley, thyme, shallot, lemon, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, parsley, thyme, shallot, lemon, nutmeg, egg. 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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