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A Nice Breakfast Dish

A veal stew with potatoes, herbs, and cream served over buttered toast with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

A Nice Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Cut the veal steak into strips about 1 inch long.

  2. Place the veal in a saucepan and cover with water.

  3. Cover and cook until the veal begins to become tender.

  4. Season with sliced potato, parsley or celery, salt, and pepper, then cook for a few more minutes.

  5. Add the milk or cream and butter.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Butter toast and place on a platter.

  3. Slice the eggs and lay them on the toast.

  4. Pour the veal stew over the eggs and toast.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during slow covered cooking in water.
Potato
Adds starch that slightly thickens the stew and gives it body.
Rich milk or cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the stew a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, contributing richness to the finished stew.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add protein and a firm, mild texture that contrasts with the soft stew.

The step that matters

Cook the veal until it just begins to become tender. Veal is lean and needs gentle, covered cooking to soften its connective tissue. Stopping too early leaves it chewy, while overcooking at a hard boil can toughen the proteins and dry the meat.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, parsley, pepper, milk, butter, egg):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, parsley, pepper, milk, butter, 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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