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Veal a-LA-Bourgeoise

A veal dish braised with bacon, spices, broth, and a thickened egg yolk sauce, garnished with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Veal a-LA-Bourgeoise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into thick slices and lard them with bacon.

  2. Season the veal with pepper, coarse sea salt, beaten mace, cloves, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.

  3. In a stewpan, place slices of fat bacon, then lay the veal on top.

Cook the veal

  1. Cover the pan and heat over the fire for 8 to 10 minutes.

  2. Brown the veal on both sides over a brisk fire, then sprinkle flour over it.

  3. Pour in 1 quart of broth or gravy, cover, and let it stew gently until done.

  4. Remove the bacon slices and skim off the fat.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs with some gravy, then mix it all together until smooth and thick.

  2. Place the meat in a dish, pour the sauce over it, and garnish with 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the gravy into a smooth, rich sauce as they set with gentle heat.
Flour
Flour dusted over the browned veal thickens the broth into a body-rich sauce.
Fat bacon
Bacon fat under the veal flavours the meat and keeps it moist while it stews.
Lean veal
Lean veal is the main meat, becoming tender as it stews slowly in liquid.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently. If the sauce gets too hot or the yolks are added without tempering, they can scramble and turn grainy instead of smooth and thick.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, clove, nutmeg, parsley, flour, egg):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, clove, nutmeg, parsley, flour, egg. 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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