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Veal Olives

Veal strips rolled, coated in crumbs and herbs, fried, then simmered in a savory gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut veal into thin strips, about 3 inches wide and 4 inches long.

  2. Season the veal strips with salt and pepper.

  3. Mix cracker crumbs, savory, sage, salt, pepper, butter, and water.

  4. Spread this mixture on the veal strips.

  5. Roll up the veal strips and tie them with twine.

  6. Dust the veal rolls with flour.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Heat pork fat in a pan and fry the veal olives until brown.

  2. Remove the olives from the pan and place them in a small saucepan.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the remaining fat and stir until smooth and brown.

  4. Gradually pour in boiling water, season with salt and pepper, and stir for 2-3 minutes.

Simmer and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the olives in the saucepan and simmer for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the olives from the gravy.

  3. Cut the strings from the olives.

  4. Serve the olives with the gravy poured over.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the meat wrapper that holds the filling and becomes tender during long simmering.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the savory filling so it stays inside the rolls.
Butter
Adds fat to the filling, carrying flavour and keeping it moist during cooking.
Flour
Thickens the pan fat into a smooth, browned gravy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Browning the veal olives. Browning the flour-dusted rolls in hot fat builds colour and savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale rolls give a bland result, and the flour dusting helps the surface brown evenly.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, butter, flour, pork):

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, butter, flour, pork. 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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