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Sauce for Boiled Veal

A sauce made from egg yolks, lemon, butter, salt, nutmeg, and water, thickened over boiling water, served with boiled veal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sauce for Boiled Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the yolks of eggs, lemon juice, butter, salt, nutmeg, and water.

  2. Place the saucepan over boiling water and stir constantly until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. For a richer sauce, substitute water with veal gravy mixed with parsley.

  2. Serve with boiled veal or calf's head.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky texture and a rounded, rich mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.

The step that matters

Stir constantly over boiling water until the sauce thickens. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce gets too hot or sits still, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth one.

“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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