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To Stew Veal That Has Been Dressed

A veal stew simmered with broth, spices, and lemon, finished with a butter‑flour sauce and garnished with toasted bread, oysters, bacon, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Stew Veal That Has Been Dressed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Place the veal slices in a stew-pan and cover with water or broth.

  2. Season the veal with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, mace, sweet marjoram, shallot, and lemon thyme or grated lemon peel.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew until almost done, then add good gravy, mushroom liquor, and lemon juice.

  2. Let it stew a little longer, then strain off the liquid.

  3. Thicken the liquid with butter and flour.

Serve

  1. Place the meat in a dish and pour the sauce over it.

  2. Garnish with sippets, fried oysters or bits of broiled bacon, and sliced lemon.

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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Marjoram + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 stew, becoming tender through slow simmering in liquid.
Butter and flour
Together they thicken the strained liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Good gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the stewing liquid.
Mushroom liquor
Contributes earthy, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the liquid with butter and flour. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid to avoid raw starch taste and lumps, and the sauce should be kept at a gentle simmer so it thickens smoothly without scorching.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram, shallot, lemon, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram, shallot, lemon, mushroom. 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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