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Italian Veal

Italian veal meatballs made with onion, bay leaf, cayenne, white pepper, egg, veal, veal fat, flour, and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Italian Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the onion, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, white pepper, and beaten egg in a mixture of bread and milk.

  2. Remove the bay leaf and add the pounded raw veal and boiled veal fat.

  3. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve and mix in the flour to form rolls.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie each roll in a cloth dipped in hot water and dusted with flour.

  2. Place the rolls in boiling water and cook for 10 to 12 minutes.

  3. Serve with a well-seasoned white or brown gravy.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

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

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Binds the meat mixture so the rolls hold together when cooked.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture firm up into shapeable rolls.
Raw veal
Forms the main body of the meatballs, giving a tender, delicate texture.
Boiled veal fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the lean veal from drying out.

The step that matters

Tie each roll in a cloth dipped in hot water and dusted with flour.. The cloth must be tight and floured so the roll keeps its shape and does not stick or split in the boiling water. Loose wrapping lets the lean mixture break apart during cooking.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, egg, veal, 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.

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