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Potage De Veau.— Veal Pottage

A veal stew made with knuckle, carrots, onion, mace, chervil, flour, butter, and optional sour cream, served over buttered rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 355 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Potage De Veau.— Veal Pottage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Stew the knuckle of veal in 2 quarts of water with 5 carrots, 1 onion, and 2 blades of mace until the meat is tender.

  2. Keep the meat hot while you prepare the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Add minced chervil, flour mixed with butter, sliced carrot or young peas, pepper, and salt to the broth.

  2. Mix thick sour cream into the soup before serving.

  3. Serve the meat on a dish of buttered rice.

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. Carrot + cherviltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Chervil + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together232 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chervil + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Provides the meat and collagen that give the broth body and tender meat.
Flour
Thickens the broth when cooked with butter, giving the soup a smoother body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flour into the broth so it thickens without lumps.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy note, softening the broth's flavor when stirred in.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter to the broth. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Mixing it with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse and thicken the broth smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, onion, chervil, flour, 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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