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Veal Grenadins

A veal cushion stuffed with forcemeat, wrapped in bacon, simmered in wine and stock, served with boiled vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Veal Grenadins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the cushion of veal and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Stuff the veal with veal forcemeat.

  3. Wrap the stuffed veal with larding bacon.

Cook

  1. Sear the veal in a hot pan until browned.

  2. Add white wine and white stock, then simmer until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with boiled French beans, cucumber, asparagus, carrots, turnips, and cauliflower.

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. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cushion of veal
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the tender meat that is seared and simmered.
Veal forcemeat
Fills the centre with a soft, moist stuffing that stays tender as the meat cooks.
Larding bacon
Wraps the veal to add fat that bastes the meat and keeps it moist during cooking.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, lifting the flavour of the sauce.
White stock
Provides the simmering liquid that cooks the veal gently and builds a savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Sear the veal until browned. Searing in a hot pan browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, building flavour and colour before the gentler simmer. A pan that is not hot enough steams the meat instead of browning it.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, white wine, beans, cucumber, asparagus, turnip, cauliflower):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, white wine, beans, cucumber, asparagus, turnip, cauliflower. 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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