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Neck of Veal, Stewed

A stew of veal neck simmered with lemon, parsley, tomatoes, and bacon, finished with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Neck of Veal, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the meat and saw the bones across if they are long, detaching the rib bones.

  2. Fry or grill the bacon until crispy and cut into dice; bake or grill the tomatoes until tender but not too soft.

Braise the meat

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a stewpan and lightly fry the meat on both sides.

  2. Add the lemon rind, parsley, and a good seasoning of pepper, cover, and cook gently for 2 to 2½ hours, basting well.

  3. Remove the meat from the stewpan, brush with meat glaze, and keep warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with a little cold stock, then add to boiling stock in a stewpan.

  2. Stir and boil for about 5 minutes, then strain and add the fat from cooking the meat, lemon juice, and cream if using.

  3. Season to taste, bring to a boil, and serve in a sauceboat, garnished with bacon and tomatoes.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal neck
Slow cooking over two hours turns the tough connective tissue tender and gives the meat a rich body.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavour of the dish.
Butter or dripping
Browns the meat at the start and adds fat and rich flavour to the finished sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when it is cooked and boiled.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky flavour and a crisp contrast to the tender meat.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Make the sauce with the flour. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold stock before it goes into boiling stock, otherwise it forms lumps that cannot be removed easily. Boiling for about 5 minutes cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the sauce.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, parsley, lemon, pepper, cream. 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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