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Braised Veal

A slow‑cooked veal dish with ham, bacon, onion, carrot, mushrooms, sugar, nutmeg, mace, pepper, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Braised Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the ham or bacon slices in a stewpan and add the veal on top of the slices.

  2. Add the onion, mushrooms, carrot, sugar, nutmeg, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Layer thin bacon over the veal and pour in the stock or water.

Braise

  1. Cover tightly and simmer gently until the veal is cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the veal to a hot dish.

  2. Skim the gravy, then strain it with the ham and vegetables.

  3. Boil the gravy again.

  4. Pour the gravy over the veal before serving.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + carrottop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,796 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender through slow, moist simmering.
Stock or water
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the veal and forms the gravy.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and flavour that seasons the meat and gravy as it cooks.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and gravy.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid tightly covered. A gentle simmer keeps the liquid below a hard boil, so the connective tissue softens slowly without the meat turning dry and stringy. A tight lid keeps moisture from escaping, so the veal braises rather than drying out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, clove, mushroom, carrot, sugar, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, clove, mushroom, carrot, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

More braised veal recipes

Neck 27Fillet 11Breast 10Cutlets 4Neck with Oyster Sauce 3Shoulder 3 See all 22 →

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