Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Veal, Breast Of, Rolled and Stewed
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the veal
Remove the bones and tendons from the veal.
Boil the bones for gravy.
Flatten the meat with a rolling pin.
Season the meat with salt and pepper.
Spread a thin layer of forcemeat on top.
Roll the meat tightly.
Bind the rolled meat with kitchen twine.
Make the stock and simmer
Bring enough stock or water to a boil in a saucepan.
Add onion, carrot, turnip, celery, and seasoning if using water.
Skim the boiling liquid.
Add the rolled veal to the liquid.
Simmer gently for 3 to 3.5 hours, depending on size.
Prepare the accompaniments
Prepare the gravy.
Prepare the forcemeat balls.
Prepare the rolls of bacon.
Serve
Remove the veal to a hot dish.
Take off the twine.
Garnish with forcemeat balls, rolls of bacon, and cut lemon.
If the veal is not a good color, use a little brown gravy to enhance its appearance.
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.
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Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together10,173 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together8,002 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,418 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
-
Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,467 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal breast
- Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
- Veal forcemeat
- Adds a flavorful, moist filling that keeps the rolled meat juicy as it cooks.
- Rolls of fried bacon
- Contributes savory fat and smoky flavor to the garnish and the dish.
- Onion
- Adds aromatic sweetness to the cooking liquid that flavors the stock and gravy.
The step that matters
Simmer gently for 3 to 3.5 hours. Boiling vigorously toughens the meat's proteins and can break the roll apart. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the tendon-rich veal slowly soften into tender meat without drying it out.
Swap the onion
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, pepper, carrot, turnip, celery):
- Parsnipfits better
- Leekfits better
- Spinachfits better
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, pepper, carrot, turnip, celery. 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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