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To Stew Veal

A rolled veal joint with bacon, eggs, breadcrumbs, and herbs, stewed slowly in water and finished with a seasoned gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Stew Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the bones from the veal without disfiguring the meat.

  2. Flatten the joint and season it with white pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Lay the sliced bacon, stuffing, and hard-boiled eggs on the veal.

  4. Roll it up neatly and bind with kitchen twine.

  5. Dust the rolled veal with flour.

Brown and stew

  1. Rub the bottom of a large stew pan with butter and brown the veal on all sides.

  2. Once browned, add the water and stew slowly for 2 to 2.5 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Pour off the gravy.

  2. If the gravy is not thick enough, brown a little butter and flour, then add to the gravy.

  3. Season the sauce with cayenne, salt, and a squeeze of lemon, skim it, and pour over the meat before serving.

  4. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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 the dish, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the lean veal as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the stuffing, absorbing juices and holding the filling together.
Suet
Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich during long cooking.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add structure and visual interest inside the rolled stuffing.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the gravy when browned with butter into a roux.

The step that matters

Browning the veal on all sides. Browning creates flavorful Maillard reactions on the surface, which build the color and depth of the stew's gravy. Pale meat gives a flat, washed-out result.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, lemon, bread, parsley, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, lemon, bread, parsley, pepper. 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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