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Breast of Veal Farcie

A veal breast stuffed with kidney, sausage, shallots, parsley, and egg yolks, simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Breast of Veal Farcie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Bone the veal and remove the gristle.

  2. Flatten the meat with a rolling pin.

  3. Mix the kidney, sausage meat, shallots, salt, pepper, parsley, and egg yolks together.

  4. Spread the mixture on the veal, roll it up tightly, and sew it closed.

Cook and serve

  1. Skewer the rolled veal and place it in a stewpan on slices of bacon.

  2. Add stock, salt, pepper, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cook until the veal is done, then remove the skewers.

  4. Skim the sauce, strain it, add flour, and reduce the sauce.

  5. Serve the sauce around the veal.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Forms the outer wrap that holds the stuffing and cooks into tender slices.
Sausage meat
Adds fat and savory body, keeping the stuffing moist during cooking.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing together so it holds its shape when sliced.
Flour
Thickens the strained stock into a sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and keeps the veal moist while it cooks.

The step that matters

Roll and sew the veal tightly. If the roll is loose, the stuffing can shift or fall out during cooking and the slices will not hold together. Tight rolling and secure sewing keep the filling in place while the meat cooks evenly.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, meat, pepper, parsley, egg, flour):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, meat, pepper, parsley, egg, flour. 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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