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Blanquette of Veal

A veal stew simmered with carrots, onions, herbs, and finished with a butter‑flour sauce and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the veal

  1. Cut the veal into walnut-sized pieces and place in a pan with enough water to cover.

  2. Tie the mixed herbs in a piece of cloth and add to the pan.

  3. Add the carrots and studded onions to the pan.

  4. Remove any scum and simmer gently for one hour.

  5. Strain the liquid into a basin and place the meat on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir without browning.

  3. Gradually add the veal gravy, seasoning with pepper and salt.

  4. Return the meat to the sauce.

  5. Stir in the parsley.

  6. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  7. Allow to thicken without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve warm.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in the liquid.
Butter
Carries flavor and forms the fat base of the roux for the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set without boiling.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gently setting as their proteins coagulate. If the sauce boils after they go in, they can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, butter, flour, pepper, carrot, veal, egg):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, butter, flour, pepper, carrot, veal, 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.

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