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Blanquette of Veal

A veal dish simmered in a creamy sauce with mushrooms and lemon, finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Slice mushroom buttons and sauté in butter over medium heat for 12‑15 minutes without browning.

  2. Remove mushrooms and place them on the veal.

Heat and thicken

  1. Pour boiling sauce tournee over the veal and mushrooms.

  2. Heat the blanquette slowly, keeping it away from direct heat.

  3. Mix a spoonful of sauce with beaten egg yolks and stir back into the blanquette.

  4. Add strained lemon juice and shake saucepan until sauce is just set.

Serve

  1. Serve the blanquette immediately.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Cold veal
Provides the main meat, cooked gently in the sauce until tender.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body when gently heated.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the mushrooms and sauce with fat.
Mushroom buttons
Add savoury flavour and a tender, meaty texture to the dish.
Sauce tournee
Forms the thickened base that coats the veal and mushrooms.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the egg yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Mixing in a spoonful of sauce first tempers the yolks, and keeping the heat low lets the sauce set smooth rather than curdled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, butter, sauce, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, butter, sauce, egg, lemon. 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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