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Hotch-potch of Knuckles of Veal

A stew of veal knuckles with onions, bacon, carrots, turnips, herbs, cloves, peppercorns, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hotch-potch of Knuckles of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the knuckles of veal in a saucepan with onions, fat trimmings, bacon, carrots, turnips, sweet herbs, cloves, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Pour in 1 pint of broth and simmer until the liquid reduces to half-glaze.

  3. Add more broth to cover the ingredients by three-quarters and boil for a few minutes.

  4. Move the saucepan to the edge of the fire and simmer until the meat and vegetables are tender.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckles
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and gives body to the broth as collagen softens during slow simmering.
Streaky bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour that seasons the broth as it cooks.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soft texture to the stew as they cook.
Broth
Forms the cooking liquid that carries flavour and gently braises the meat and vegetables.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat until tender. Veal knuckle has a lot of connective tissue. It needs a long, gentle simmer, not a rolling boil, so the collagen can slowly turn to gelatin. Boiling hard toughens the meat and makes the broth cloudy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, carrot, turnip):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, carrot, turnip. 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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