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Breast of Veal, with Green Peas

A veal breast stew cooked with butter, flour, pepper, salt, stock, herbs, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breast of Veal, with Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Cut the breast of veal into pieces.

  2. Fry the pieces in butter with a little flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Stew and serve

  1. Add a little stock and a bunch of sweet herbs.

  2. Let it stew for about an hour.

  3. Add the green peas and serve after about 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Breast of veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Butter
Fat that browns the veal pieces and carries flavour into the dish.
Flour
Lightly coats the veal, helping it brown and thickening the cooking liquid.
Stock
Liquid that moistens the veal during stewing and forms the sauce.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, bright flavour at the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Let it stew for about an hour. Veal breast contains connective tissue that only softens into tender meat with long, gentle, moist heat. Keeping the liquid at a slow simmer prevents toughening and drying.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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