Skip to main content
Main

Veal with Parsley Sauce

A veal dish simmered in white sauce with parsley, lemon, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the veal

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

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and fry the meat gently until the entire surface is lightly browned.

  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 warm.

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

  3. Stir in the parsley, lemon juice, and egg yolk 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

Veal
Is the main protein; slow simmering in liquid makes it tender.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that carries the flavour and coats the meat.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning on the meat's surface.
Egg yolk
Thickens the warm sauce as it gently cooks, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat. If the sauce gets too hot or boils after the yolk goes in, it can curdle and turn grainy, so keep it warm rather than boiling.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes