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Boiled Veal

A dish of boiled veal knuckle, neck or breast, calf's head, and brains, served hot with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the meats

  1. Boil the knuckle of veal for 2 hours.

  2. Boil the scrag of neck or breast for 1¾ to 2 hours.

  3. For the calf's head, have it cut in half and remove all inside bones.

  4. Wash the head in several waters with a little salt to draw out the blood.

  5. Boil the head in plenty of water for 2 to 2¼ hours.

Make the brains

  1. Clean the brains and boil them in a cloth with sage leaves for 20-30 minutes.

  2. Beat the brains in a small saucepan with salt, pepper, butter, and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve the brains hot around the skinned tongue.

  2. Garnish the calf's head with sliced lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Long boiling turns the connective tissue tender and releases flavour into the broth.
Calf's head
Slow boiling softens the meat and gelatinous tissue until it is tender throughout.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture when beaten into the brains.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich brains and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Wash the head in several waters with a little salt to draw out the blood. Changing the water and soaking with salt draws out blood that would otherwise cloud the broth and taint the flavour of the head.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Sagethe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, butter, lemon, 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.

More boiled veal recipes

Fillet 36Loin 25Knuckle 19Breast 15Leg 6 See all 24 →

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