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Veal Olives

Veal Olives are rolled veal slices stuffed with suet, breadcrumbs, herbs, and lemon rind, then stewed in brown sauce and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Cut the veal into slices.

  2. Beat the slices out with a wet cutlet bat.

  3. Mince the trimmings of the meat, omitting any skin or sinews.

  4. Mix the minced meat with the suet, butter, breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon rind, mixed herbs, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Add enough beaten egg to moisten the mixture.

  6. Spread the stuffing on each slice of veal.

Roll and braise

  1. Roll the slices up.

  2. Tie with string.

  3. Heat a little dripping or butter in a stew pan.

  4. Fry the olives until lightly colored.

  5. Pour off the fat.

  6. Add the brown sauce and sherry.

  7. Stew gently for about an hour until the meat is tender.

  8. Remove the string.

Serve

  1. Serve the olives on a bed of spinach or mashed potatoes, with the sauce strained around the dish.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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

Veal
Forms the main body of each olive and becomes tender through slow stewing.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when rolled and cooked.
Beef suet
Adds fat and moisture to the stuffing so it stays juicy during stewing.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the stuffing a soft, cohesive texture.
Brown sauce
Provides the liquid in which the olives stew, adding savory flavor to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce as it stews.

The step that matters

Stew gently for about an hour. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the veal tender and prevents the sauce from reducing too fast or toughening the meat proteins.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, parsley, lemon, egg, sauce, butter. 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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