Skip to main content
Main

Blanquette of Veal

A veal dish simmered with mushrooms in a sauce thickened with veal gravy and egg yolks, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mushrooms

  1. Slice the mushroom buttons and sauté them in butter over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes without browning.

  2. Remove the mushrooms and place them on the veal.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Pour boiling sauce tournee over the veal and mushrooms.

  2. Heat the blanquette slowly, mixing a spoonful of sauce with the beaten egg yolks and then stir this mixture back into the blanquette.

  3. Add the strained lemon juice and gently heat until the sauce is just set.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and enrich it as they gently set when heated.
Sauce tournee
Forms the thickened veal gravy that coats the meat and mushrooms.
Butter
Cooks the mushrooms and adds rich flavour and fat to the dish.
Mushroom buttons
Add earthy flavour and body to the blanquette.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce gets too hot they curdle and turn grainy. Add a spoonful of hot sauce to the beaten yolks first, then stir back in slowly over gentle heat until the sauce is just set.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, butter, sauce, egg, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, butter, sauce, egg, lemon. 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 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes