Skip to main content
Main

Veal Stew Piquante

A veal stew cooked with cucumber, lettuce, and optional green peas, finished with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal Stew Piquante

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Season the veal with salt and pepper, then dust it with flour.

  2. In a pan, heat the butter or clarified dripping and fry the veal until lightly browned.

Stew

  1. Add the cucumber and lettuce to the pan and stir to prevent burning.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and pour in boiling stock or water to barely cover.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour or until the veal is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a few drops of lemon juice before serving hot.

  2. If in season, stir in the green peas for added flavor.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lettuce + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cucumber + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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

Veal
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Coats the veal so it browns well and helps thicken the cooking liquid.
Butter or clarified dripping
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the veal.
Cucumber
Softens while stewing, adding moisture and a mild, fresh flavor.
Lettuce
Wilts in the stew, adding moisture and body to the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the veal is tender. A gentle simmer lets collagen in the veal break down slowly, making it tender. A hard boil toughens the muscle fibers and can leave the meat dry and chewy.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, flour, butter, lemon):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cucumber, lettuce, pepper, flour, butter, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes