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Kalbsbraten — Roast Veal

A veal roast seasoned with salt, bacon, butter, onion, and cloves, simmered in water and served with its gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,901 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Kalbsbraten — Roast Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Beat the meat well.

  2. Rub the meat with coarse sea salt.

Brown and braise

  1. Place the meat in a deep stew-pan with rashers of bacon underneath and on top, or with butter on top.

  2. Brown the meat on all sides.

  3. Add ½ pint of water and an onion with 6 cloves stuck in it.

  4. Baste the meat often until thoroughly cooked.

  5. If browning is slow, keep the lid on after adding water.

Finish the gravy

  1. Skim and strain the gravy for serving.

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. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  4. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

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

  5. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Is the main meat, which becomes tender and juicy as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Bacon
Lends fat and savoury flavour to the meat as it cooks in the pan.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown.
Onion
Adds aroma and sweetness to the cooking liquid that becomes the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the meat on all sides. Browning creates flavourful colour through the Maillard reaction, which depends on dry, hot surface contact. Crowding or excess moisture makes the meat steam and go grey, so the gravy tastes flat.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, onion. 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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