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Roast Veal

Roast veal is a slow‑cooked veal breast seasoned with pepper and salt, basted with butter, served with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Roast Veal

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

  1. Season the breast of veal with pepper and coarse sea salt. Skewer the breast firmly in place.

  2. Flour the meat and roast it slowly at 350°F (175°C) for about four hours.

Roast and baste

  1. Baste the meat with butter to keep it moist.

Make the gravy

  1. When done, put the gravy in a saucepan.

  2. Add a piece of butter rolled in browned flour to the gravy.

  3. If there isn't enough gravy, add a little more water and season with pepper and salt to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 breast
The main cut of meat that becomes tender and juicy during slow roasting.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture when basted over the meat and enriches the gravy.
Browned flour
Thickens the gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Water
Thins the gravy when there is not enough of it to serve.

The step that matters

Slow roasting with basting. Cooking at a low, steady oven temperature for a long time lets the connective tissue in the veal soften without drying out the lean meat. Regular basting with butter keeps the surface moist and promotes gentle browning, so the meat stays juicy.

“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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