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Blanquette of Veal

A veal dish simmered in white sauce with mushroom ketchup, egg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine white sauce and mushroom ketchup, then bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the veal and heat until warmed through.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg and cook until the sauce thickens.

  3. Add lemon juice 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast veal
Provides the main meat; it is already cooked, so it only needs warming through.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base and carries moisture through the dish.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as its proteins set with gentle heat, giving it body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg. Egg proteins thicken the sauce when heated gently, but a hard boil or too much heat can scramble them and make the sauce curdle. Keep the heat low and stir steadily.

“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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