Skip to main content
Main

Rich Gravy for Veal Cutlets

A rich gravy made from veal trimmings, water, herbs, onion, lemon peel, butter, and flour.

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

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Rich Gravy for Veal Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the veal trimmings and water in a stewpan.

  2. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, onion, and lemon peel.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the liquid into a basin.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt butter in the stewpan.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a paste.

  3. Stir the paste over heat for a few 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal trimmings
Release gelatin and savory meat flavor into the water to form the base stock.
Butter
Provides fat that coats the flour and carries flavor into the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a gravy when cooked with the butter and stock.

The step that matters

Stir the paste over heat for a few minutes. Cooking the butter and flour together removes the raw starchy taste and lets the paste thicken smoothly once liquid is added. Stopping too early leaves the gravy tasting floury and less thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, thyme, parsley, lemon, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, thyme, parsley, lemon, butter, flour. 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

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