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To Stew Veal

A veal shoulder stuffed with breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, and lemon, then stewed in butter and water with a seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

To Stew Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the knuckle from the shoulder of veal neatly.

  2. Stuff it with breadcrumbs, minced suet, parsley, lemon peel, white pepper, and salt, moistened with egg and milk.

  3. Sew it up.

Brown and stew

  1. Rub the bottom of a large stew pan with butter.

  2. Brown the veal on both sides.

  3. Add 1 pint of cold water.

  4. Stew slowly for 2 to 2.5 hours.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Before serving, draw off the gravy.

  2. If not thick enough, brown a little butter.

  3. Dust in flour.

  4. Mix with the gravy.

  5. Season the sauce with Cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

  6. Skim the sauce.

  7. Pour it over the meat before serving.

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal shoulder
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through long slow stewing.
Egg
Moistens the stuffing and helps bind the breadcrumbs together.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and structure.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and browns to deepen the gravy's colour and taste.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy as it is stirred in with the drippings.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly. Gentle, low heat over a long time breaks down the connective tissue in veal shoulder, making it tender. Rapid boiling toughens the meat and can leave the gravy cloudy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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