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Veal Chops

Veal chops simmered with bacon, forcemeat balls, peas, and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Veal Chops

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the veal

  1. Simmer veal chops gently for nearly 2 hours.

  2. Roll the bacon and skewer it.

  3. Prepare the forcemeat, making it less moist than for stuffing.

  4. Shape the forcemeat into walnut‑sized balls and fry or bake until crisp and brown in hot butter or fat.

  5. Cook the bacon at the same time.

  6. After 2 hours, add the peas and cook until nearly tender.

  7. Mix butter and flour kneaded smoothly together, adding in small portions.

  8. Continue cooking until the peas are ready.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove herbs, then add ketchup, tomato sauce, and lemon juice, seasoning to taste.

  2. Serve garnished with forcemeat balls and rolls of bacon.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Peas + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Peas + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Veal chops
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the forcemeat balls brown and crisp when fried or baked.
Flour
Kneaded with butter, it thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Bacon
Adds savory fat that renders and crisps as it cooks around the chops.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Simmering the veal gently. Veal chops are lean and can toughen if boiled hard. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue break down slowly, keeping the meat tender and juicy over the nearly 2 hours of cooking.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, ketchup, tomato, sauce, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, ketchup, tomato, sauce, lemon. 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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