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Blanquette De Veau

A veal stew simmered in stock, finished with a white sauce of butter, flour, lemon, egg yolks, mushrooms, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Blanquette De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal and stock

  1. Cut the veal into 2‑inch square pieces, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Place veal in a saucepan with carrot, turnip, onion, celery, herbs, cloves, and some bones.

  3. Cover with water and simmer for nearly 1 hour until tender.

  4. Remove veal pieces and strain the stock.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt butter and flour, then gradually add ½ pint of the stock.

  2. Bring to a boil, then season with pepper and salt, add lemon juice, veal, chopped parsley, and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Boil for a few minutes, then remove from heat and stir in egg yolks until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve veal neatly with sauce poured over it and croutons of bread around.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 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
Becomes tender through slow simmering, giving the dish its main body and meaty texture.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the stock into a smooth, velvety sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set when stirred off the heat.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a little moisture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat. If the sauce is boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so remove the pan from heat first and stir steadily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, mushroom, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, mushroom, 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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