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Shoulder of Veal, Stewed

A slow‑cooked stew of veal shoulder with onions, mushrooms, carrots, green peas, thyme, bay leaf, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Shoulder of Veal, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Sprinkle flour into the butter, stir with a wooden spoon, and gradually pour in the stock, stirring while pouring.

Stew the meat

  1. Add the rolled veal and a pinch of salt.

  2. Add thyme and bay leaf for flavor, if desired.

  3. Cover the stewpan with a lid and place hot coals on top.

  4. Let the meat stew for 4 to 5 hours.

  5. Boil or stew the onions, mushrooms, and carrots separately or with the veal.

Serve

  1. When the meat is done, place it on a dish, remove the string, and arrange the vegetables around it.

  2. Serve very 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. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat and liquid.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid and savory flavor that gently braises the meat.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they stew, adding depth to the sauce.
Carrots
Release natural sugars as they cook, adding gentle sweetness.
Mushrooms
Add earthy, savory aroma and moisture to the stew.

The step that matters

Keep the stew at a gentle simmer. Meat shoulder is tough connective tissue that needs long, low heat to break down into tender gelatin. Vigorous boiling tightens muscle fibers and squeezes out moisture, leaving the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, thyme, onion, mushroom, carrot):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, thyme, onion, mushroom, carrot. 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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