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Blanquette De Veau

A creamy veal stew with mushrooms, onions, and a roux-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Blanquette De Veau

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir to create a roux.

  3. Gradually add the white wine, stirring constantly until smooth.

Simmer

  1. Add the veal, onions, mushrooms, and bouquet garni.

  2. Cover and simmer until the veal is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bouquet garni and stir in the cream, egg yolks, and lemon juice before serving.

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 + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in at the end.
Cream
Adds richness and smooths the texture of the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Veal
Provides the main meat, becoming tender during slow simmering.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks and cream off the heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if they get too hot. Adding them after simmering, and keeping the sauce from boiling, helps keep it smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, mushroom, white wine, cream, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, mushroom, white wine, cream, 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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