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Fillet of Veal, Roasted

Roasted veal fillet stuffed with forcemeat, coated in flour, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Fillet of Veal, Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the bone from the fillet and make a deep incision between the fillet and the flap.

  2. Fill the incision with forcemeat.

  3. Bind the veal in a round form and secure it with skewers and twine.

  4. Run a skewer through the middle of the fillet.

Roast

  1. Cover the veal with buttered paper and place it at a distance from the fire to start cooking.

  2. Advance the veal closer to the fire as it cooks, basting well.

  3. Dredge with flour just before removing the paper.

  4. Remove the skewers and replace them with a silver skewer.

Serve

  1. Pour gravy over the veal and serve with boiled ham, bacon, or pickled pork.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 fillet
Forms the main body of the dish and is the meat being roasted and served.
Forcemeat
Fills the deep incision, adding moisture and flavour to the centre of the roast.
Melted butter
Basting fat that keeps the surface moist and helps it brown as it roasts.
Flour
Dusted over the surface near the end, helping form a browned, crisp crust.

The step that matters

Advance the veal closer to the fire as it cooks, basting well.. Starting at a distance allows gentle cooking through, while moving closer later browns the surface. Frequent basting keeps the lean meat moist, since fat carries heat and limits drying.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, flour, butter):

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter. 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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