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Breast, Stewed

A veal breast stew cooked with bacon, butter, onions, carrots, turnip, green onions, parsley, and 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

Make the base

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

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

Braise and serve

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

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

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

  4. 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
Becomes tender and rich through slow simmering, the main body of the stew.
Bacon
Renders fat that carries flavour and browns the pan base for the stew.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, adding savoury depth to the braising liquid.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stewing liquid as they soften.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the onions cook gently and brown lightly.

The step that matters

Browning the veal until golden on both sides. Browning creates savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale, steamed meat gives a flatter stew, so the surface should be dry and coloured before liquid goes in.

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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