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Veal, Larded and Roast

A veal roast larded with bacon, braised with vegetables and stock, finished with a brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal, Larded and Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Saw the bones across, remove the short ends and skin, and fold the flap under.

  2. Lard the upper surface of the veal in close rows.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, place the prepared vegetables, bouquet-garni, peppercorns, and salt, then add stock to barely cover the vegetables.

  2. Lay the meat on top, cover with greased paper, and fit the lid closely.

  3. Cook gently for 2 hours, adding more stock as necessary.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Preheat a baking tin with a little hot dripping, place the meat in it, baste, and bake gently for 30 minutes, basting well.

  2. In a separate stewpan, melt the butter, add the flour, and stir until it turns nut-brown.

  3. Add ½ pint of stock, including the stock from the braised veal, and stir until boiling.

  4. Simmer gently for a few minutes and season to taste.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of veal
Forms the main body of the roast, becoming tender through long, gentle cooking.
Larding bacon
Adds fat threaded through the lean meat, keeping it moist and adding flavour as it cooks.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and forms the base roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter, and turns nut-brown for colour and flavour.
Onion
Builds savoury aromatic flavour in the braising liquid that becomes the gravy.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux until nut-brown. Flour cooked in butter thickens the gravy, and taking it to nut-brown adds colour and a toasted flavour. Stopping too early leaves a pale, floury taste, while going too far scorches it and gives a bitter flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley. 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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