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Stewed Breast of Veal with Oysters

A veal breast stuffed with forcemeat, stewed with oysters and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Breast of Veal with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bone the veal and make a stock with the bones, vegetables, and herbs.

  2. Stuff the veal with forcemeat and tie it up.

Stew the veal

  1. Place the veal in a saucepan and cover with stock.

  2. Add the peppercorns and simmer for 2 hours or more.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. When nearly ready, make a sauce with the butter, flour, and some of the stock.

  2. Remove gills from oysters, blanch them, and cook in the sauce for a few minutes.

  3. Serve the veal and pour the sauce over it.

  4. Garnish with slices of lemon and forcemeat balls.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Veal + oystertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together988 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,582 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

Flour and butter 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 breast
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and a soft texture to the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and carries flavour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Simmering the veal gently. At a hard boil, meat proteins tighten and toughen, so a gentle simmer over two hours or more lets connective tissue soften and keeps the veal moist and tender.

“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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