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Veal A-LA Bourgeoise

A veal stew with bacon, spices, and broth, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Veal A-LA Bourgeoise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into thin slices and lard them with bacon.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, beaten mace, cloves, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.

  3. Place slices of fat bacon in the bottom of a stewpan and lay the veal on top.

Brown and stew

  1. Cover the pan and heat over the fire for 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. Brown the veal on both sides over a brisk fire, shaking flour over it.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of broth or gravy, cover, and stew gently until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bacon slices, skim off the fat, and beat the yolks of 3 eggs with some of the gravy.

  2. Mix everything together and serve.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through gentle stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the veal as it cooks.
Flour
Dusted over the veal to help it brown and to lightly thicken the gravy.
Eggs (in the method)
Egg yolks, beaten into the gravy, enrich and thicken the sauce.
Broth or gravy
Provides the cooking liquid that stews the veal and forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the veal over a brisk fire. Searing the flour-dusted veal on both sides builds browned flavour through the Maillard reaction and helps the flour form a base for the sauce. Pale, steamed meat tastes flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, clove, nutmeg, parsley, flour):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, clove, nutmeg, parsley, flour. 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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