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To Dress Cold Calf’s Head or Veal a LA Maitre D'hotel

A sauce for dressing cold calf's head or veal, made with butter, flour, veal gravy, vinegar, chili vinegar, cayenne, mushroom catsup, sugar, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and mushroom match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,446 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: scallop

Directions

Prepare the sauce base

  1. Cut the cold calf's head or veal into small, delicate slices or equal-sized scallops.

  2. In a saucepan, knead the butter and flour together smoothly with a knife.

  3. Heat the butter and flour mixture over gentle heat, stirring until it simmers for 1-2 minutes without coloring.

Make the sauce and add the meat

  1. Gradually add the veal gravy or beef stock in small portions, allowing the sauce to boil after each addition.

  2. Once blended and boiled for a couple of minutes, stir in the common vinegar, chili vinegar, cayenne, mushroom catsup, and sugar.

  3. When the sauce boils again, add the minced parsley and the meat, letting it heat through without boiling for 10-12 minutes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Veal + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,446 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together12,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together28,543 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together20,804 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor, while combining with flour to form a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid, giving it body.
Veal gravy or beef stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it is added to the roux and boiled.
Mushroom catsup
Adds savory, umami depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the meat and heating through without boiling. Once the meat goes in, the sauce should only heat through. Boiling can toughen the meat and make the sauce break or separate, so keep it just below a boil for the full 10-12 minutes.

Flavor stand-ins for the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, vinegar, mushroom, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Garlicabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, vinegar, mushroom, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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