Skip to main content
Main

Veal Olives

Veal steaks stuffed with force‑meat, simmered with wine, ketchup, lemon, oysters, and browned butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Veal Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the olives

  1. Cut veal steaks longer than wide and dip in egg yolk.

  2. Season with mixed spices and coarse sea salt.

  3. Roll force-meat into oval balls and place one in each steak.

  4. Roll and tie each steak with thread, then brown them.

Stew and serve

  1. Thicken veal gravy with browned butter and flour, adding white wine, ketchup, lemon juice, browned oysters, and force-meat balls.

  2. Stew the olives for 45 minutes, then remove threads and serve, placing the largest in the center with the rest around it.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 steaks
Form the rolled olives and provide the main meat that becomes tender during stewing.
Egg yolk
Helps the coating adhere to the veal and gives a rich, binding layer.
Force-meat
Adds a soft, savoury filling that stays moist inside each rolled steak.
Browned butter
Adds nutty aroma and fat, and with flour helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the olives.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy before stewing. Cooking browned butter and flour together first forms a roux, which thickens the liquid evenly. Adding flour directly to hot liquid can leave lumps, so the gravy must be smooth before the olives simmer.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes