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Veal and Bacon

A veal and bacon dish cooked in bacon fat, finished with flour, butter, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the meat

  1. Fry the bacon and place it on a dish before the fire.

  2. Fry the veal in the bacon fat over low heat for 20 minutes until browned on both sides.

  3. Place the veal on the dish with the bacon.

Make the sauce

  1. Pour off the fat from the pan.

  2. Dredge 2 teaspoons of baked flour into the frying pan.

  3. Add ½ ounce of butter and shake the pan.

  4. Pour in ½ cup of water and boil for a few minutes.

  5. Add ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt and serve the sauce with the veal and bacon.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Is the main meat, browned in bacon fat to build flavour and a savoury crust.
Bacon
Its rendered fat cooks the veal and adds smoky, savoury flavour.
Baked flour
Thickens the pan juices into a sauce as it is stirred with the fat and water.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that smooths the sauce and gives it a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Browning the veal over low heat. Veal is lean and can dry out or turn tough if cooked too long. Gentle heat for the full 20 minutes browns the surface slowly while keeping the inside moist.

“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.

More veal and bacon recipes

Stew 11Soup 8Sausage 3

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