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Haricot Veal and Peas

A stew of veal, ham, potatoes, and peas simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haricot Veal and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into 1‑inch thick slices, then divide into neat pieces about 3 inches wide and long.

  2. Season the veal with salt and pepper, roll in flour, and fry in butter with the ham until light brown.

Stew

  1. Transfer the meat to a stewpan, add chopped parsley and boiling stock.

  2. Simmer gently for 45 minutes, then add the potatoes.

  3. Continue to simmer until the potatoes are cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas in a separate dish.

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

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

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,016 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Veal
Forms the main body of the stew, becoming tender through gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns in the butter and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the floured meat and adds richness.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour as it fries alongside the veal in butter.
New potatoes
Absorb flavour from the stock and add body and starch to the stew.
Boiling stock
Forms the cooking liquid that flavours and tenderises the veal and potatoes.

The step that matters

Frying the floured veal until light brown. Browning the flour-coated meat in butter builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale or overcrowded frying steams the meat and leaves the stew tasting flat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

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