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Bombarded Veal

A veal fillet stuffed with a forcemeat mixture, baked with caul, and served with a sauce of mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, artichokes, and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 26 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Bombarded Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Remove the bone from the veal fillet and prepare the forcemeat by mixing bread crumbs, bacon, anchovy, marjoram, lemon peel, thyme, parsley, salt, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, egg, and cream.

  3. Fill the cavity of the fillet with the forcemeat.

  4. Make cuts around the fillet, filling each cut with forcemeat, spinach, and a mixture of bread crumbs, oysters, and beef marrow.

Bake

  1. Wrap the caul around the fillet and place it in a deep pot with 1 pint of water.

  2. Cover the pot with a coarse paste to prevent unpleasant flavors from the oven.

  3. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

  4. After baking, skim off the fat and transfer the gravy to a saucepan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, artichokes, browning sauce, morels, and truffles to the gravy.

  2. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour and bring to a gentle boil.

  3. Serve the veal on a dish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 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 fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through to be tender and juicy.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the forcemeat so it holds together when cooked.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat, helping it set into a cohesive stuffing when baked.
Butter and flour
Flour and melted butter form a roux that thickens the gravy into a smooth sauce.
Bacon fat
Adds fat and richness, keeping the stuffing moist during baking.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour and bring to a gentle boil. Flour needs to be cooked briefly in fat and heated fully to remove its raw taste and reach full thickening power. Boiling too hard can break the sauce or make it lumpy, so it should be kept at a gentle simmer while stirring.

“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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