Name: Meed Veal
Ingredients: veal, cut into small pieces (about the size of peas); gravy; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; 1 slice of lemon; 1 tablespoon of butter; 1 tablespoon of cream; flour, for thickening; toasted bread, cut into different shapes

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meed Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

Combine the veal pieces with a little gravy in a stewpan.
Add pepper, coarse sea salt, a slice of lemon, butter and cream.
Thicken the mixture with flour.

Serve

Serve with toasted bread cut into various shapes.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,005 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: Provides the main protein, which becomes tender as it simmers in the gravy.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream: Adds richness and body, softening the sharpness of the lemon.
Flour: Thickens the liquid so the stew clings to the veal and bread.

Swap the peas

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, butter, cream, flour, bread. 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.