Skip to main content
Main

Breast of Veal En Galantine

A veal breast rolled with forcemeat, ham, cucumbers, bacon, omelets, and optionally savory jelly, braised and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 119 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Breast of Veal En Galantine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Spread light forcemeat over the boned veal.

  2. Layer with slices of lean ham, pickled cucumbers, fat bacon, and omelets.

  3. Roll the veal tightly in a cloth and tie each end.

Braise and finish

  1. Braise the rolled veal until tender.

  2. Remove from the cloth, wipe dry, and glaze the top.

  3. Let cool, press, and serve with chopped savory jelly.

  4. Serve with stewed sorrel or stewed celery heads.

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. Cucumber + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + sorreltop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Veal + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together439 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Boned breast of veal
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender through slow braising.
Light forcemeat
Adds a soft, moist filling that binds the layers together.
Eggs
Set into omelets that give structure and a sliced, layered appearance.
Lean ham
Adds savory flavor and a contrasting layer inside the roll.

The step that matters

Roll the veal tightly in a cloth. A tight, even roll keeps the filling in place and gives the slices a neat spiral pattern. Loose rolling can let the forcemeat escape and cook unevenly during braising.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, cucumber, egg):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Sorrelthe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, cucumber, egg. 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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesSorrel SoupSorrel Soup23 recipesSorrel SaladSorrel Salad9 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes