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Veal, Stewed Breast Of, and Peas

Stewed veal breast served with a butter‑flour thickened gravy and boiled green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Veal, Stewed Breast Of, and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the breast of veal in half and remove the bone.

  2. Divide the meat into convenient-sized pieces.

Brown and stew

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the veal pieces until browned.

  2. Place the browned veal in a stewpan with the herbs, mace, cloves, onions, lemon peel, allspice, and seasoning.

  3. Pour in just enough boiling water to cover the meat, close the lid, and simmer gently for about 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain off the required gravy and thicken it with butter and flour.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients to the gravy, skim well, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the gravy over the meat and serve with boiled green peas sprinkled on top.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Slow simmering in liquid breaks down its connective tissue, leaving the meat tender.
Butter
Browns the veal in the pan and, with flour, enriches and thickens the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy together with butter, giving it body.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory depth and umami to the gravy.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with just enough water. Covering the meat with only a little liquid and keeping the simmer gentle lets the veal become tender while the gravy stays concentrated. A hard boil would toughen the meat and make the gravy cloudy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, parsley, mace, clove, lemon, allspice):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, parsley, mace, clove, lemon, allspice. 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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