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Breast of Veal, with Green Peas

A veal stew simmered with green peas, butter, flour, stock, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Veal, with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the pieces of veal and fry until browned.

  3. Sprinkle in the flour, pepper, and salt, stirring to combine.

  4. Pour in the stock and add the bunch of sweet herbs.

  5. Cover and let it stew for about 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the green peas and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Breast of veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce around the meat.
Butter
Fat for frying the veal, adding richness and browning.
Green peas
Add sweetness and color, cooking briefly in the finished stew.

The step that matters

Browning the veal. Frying the veal until browned develops deeper savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stopping too early leaves the meat pale and the stew blander.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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