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Veal A-LA-lraise

A veal stew simmered with bacon, onions, carrots, celery, and Madeira wine, finished with a brown butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,264 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Lard the veal with bacon rolled in parsley, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Place the veal in a pot and cover with water.

Stew and strain

  1. Add the scrag end, bacon or ham, onion, carrots, celery, and Madeira wine to the pot.

  2. Stew for 2 hours until tender.

  3. Strain the liquid.

Finish the sauce

  1. Mix flour and butter in a pan until brown.

  2. Lay the veal in the pan and brown it on the bottom side.

  3. Transfer the veal to a dish.

  4. Stir in some of the strained liquid and boil, then skim the surface.

  5. Add orange or lemon juice.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Veal + hamtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,805 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Slow stewing breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and the liquid rich.
Bacon
Its fat and smoky savoury flavour season the veal and the cooking liquid.
Madeira wine
Adds a sweet, fortified aroma and depth to the stewing liquid and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smoother, more body-rich sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and gives the browned flour a nutty flavour.
Orange or lemon juice
Its acidity brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the meat and fat.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and butter. Cooking the roux until brown develops nutty flavour and colour that thicken the sauce well. Heat that is too high or stirring too little can scorch it, leaving a bitter taste that spoils the whole dish.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, ham, carrot, celery):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, pepper, nutmeg, ham, carrot, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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