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Veal Olives

A slow‑cooked veal dish flavored with bouquet garni, mace, cloves, capers, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Olives

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the veal

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Prepare the veal by folding the flap under and placing it in a shallow stewpan.

Braise

  1. Slice the vegetables and add them to the stewpan with the bouquet garni, mace, cloves, and ½ cup of butter.

  2. Nearly cover the vegetables with stock and add more as it boils away.

  3. Place the veal on top of the vegetables, cover with greased paper, and put on the lid.

  4. Cook gently for 3 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a small stewpan, melt the remaining ½ cup of butter, add the flour, and fry gently until it turns nut‑brown.

  2. Once the meat is tender, remove it to a hot dish and brush it with glaze.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid into the butter and flour mixture, stirring until smooth.

  4. If needed, reduce the sauce with a little stock, then add the capers and lemon juice.

  5. Season to taste and serve the sauce separately in a tureen.

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. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle braising.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour cook into a nut-brown roux.
Stock
Provides the braising liquid that cooks the veal and forms the base of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny note that contrasts with the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the flour in butter to nut-brown. Cooking the butter and flour gently until nut-brown builds a roux with toasty flavour and colour. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while cooking too fast scorches the flour and turns the sauce bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, sauce, flour, clove, capers, 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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