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Gravy for Veal

A thin butter and flour gravy flavored with sage, onions, salt, and pepper, poured over roasted veal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Gravy for Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Stuff the veal with finely chopped sage and onions.

  2. Score the skin of the veal before roasting.

Make the basting mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add half the usual amount of flour to make a roux.

  3. Stir in a little boiling water to create a very thin melted butter.

Roast the veal

  1. Pour this mixture over the roasted veal.

  2. Roast the veal for 20 minutes per pound.

  3. Cover with buttered paper to prevent burning.

  4. Remove the paper 10 minutes before the veal is done.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Flour + sagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Melts into the roux and basting liquid, adding richness and helping the skin brown.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the gravy body.
Onions
Stuffed into the veal, they add aromatic sweetness to the meat and its juices.

The step that matters

Covering the veal with buttered paper. Covering protects the surface from burning during the long roast, and the paper must come off about 10 minutes before the end so the exposed skin can brown and crisp.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sage, 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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