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Veal with Parsley Sauce

A veal fillet simmered in white sauce, finished with parsley, lemon juice, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Veal with Parsley Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If the meat is not one compact piece, bind it into a good shape with tape.

  2. Melt the butter or fat in a stewpan and fry the meat gently until lightly browned on all sides.

  3. Add the white sauce and season with salt and pepper to taste.

  4. Cover closely and simmer gently for 2 to 2½ hours.

Make the parsley sauce

  1. Remove the meat and keep it hot.

  2. Strain the sauce and return it to the stewpan.

  3. Add the parsley, lemon juice, and yolk of egg, stirring until the sauce thickens.

  4. Pour the sauce over the veal and serve.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Fillet of veal
Is the main cut that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
White sauce
Forms the base of the sauce and carries moisture and body to the meat.
Butter or good fat
Browns the surface of the meat and adds richness to the pan.
Egg yolk
Thickens the strained sauce as it is stirred and gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk to the sauce. Egg yolk thickens when heated gently, but if the sauce gets too hot or boils while it is stirred, the yolk can scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Keep the heat low and stir constantly.

“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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