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Braised Veal

Braised veal with carrots, turnip, onion, bouquet garni, mace, cayenne, stock, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braised Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the braise

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, bouquet garni, onion or shallot, mace, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  3. Fry the mixture for 5 minutes.

  4. Spread the vegetables on the bottom of the stewpan.

  5. Trim the veal.

  6. Place the veal on top of the vegetables.

  7. Add any bones or trimmings around the veal.

  8. Cover the meat with buttered paper.

  9. Add the stock.

  10. Simmer for 30 minutes.

Roast and make the gravy

  1. Place the stewpan in a 400°F (200°C) oven without the lid for 1.5 hours, basting occasionally.

  2. Pour off most of the liquid into a clean saucepan.

  3. Reduce the liquid by boiling rapidly until thickened.

  4. Place the meat on a hot dish.

  5. Strain the gravy around the meat.

  6. Garnish with lemon.

  7. Serve.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

Loin of veal
The main cut, which becomes tender and moist during long slow cooking in stock.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the vegetables brown gently at the start.
Stock
Provides the cooking liquid that braises the meat and becomes the base of the gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and aromatic flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.
Onion or shallot
Adds savoury depth and aroma as it softens and flavours the stock.

The step that matters

Simmer before the oven, then baste. Simmering in liquid first starts the collagen in the veal breaking down. Basting in the oven keeps the surface moist so the meat stays tender rather than drying out.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, carrot, turnip, onion, pepper, lemon. 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.

More braised veal recipes

Neck 27Fillet 11Breast 10Cutlets 4Neck with Oyster Sauce 3Shoulder 3 See all 22 →

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