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Breast of Veal, with Truffles a V Italienne

A braised veal breast served with truffles and a sauce of coulis, Madeira wine, and Seville orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and truffle work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 815 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Veal, with Truffles a V Italienne

Ingredients

Directions

Braise and prepare

  1. Braise the veal whole as you would for a ragout.

  2. Slice the truffles and add them to the coulis and some of the braising liquid.

  3. Bring the truffles and coulis to a boil.

  4. Stir in the Madeira wine and the juice of the Seville orange.

  5. Remove the veal from the braise and place it on a cloth to dry excess fat.

Serve

  1. Serve the veal on a dish, topping it with the truffles and sauce, leaving as many truffles on the veal as possible.

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. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Truffle + madeira winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  3. Sauce + madeira winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Veal + madeira winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together211 recipes
  5. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

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, becoming tender through slow braising.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma that flavours the coulis and the finished sauce.
Coulis
Forms the sauce base that carries the truffles and braising flavours.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce as it reduces with the braising liquid.
Seville orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring the truffles and coulis to a boil. Truffle aroma is volatile and fades with prolonged high heat, so the sauce should be brought up to boiling only as needed and then finished promptly.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, truffle, sauce, madeira wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Red currantfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, truffle, sauce, madeira wine. 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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