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Veal, Stewed

A slow-cooked veal stew with carrots, turnip, onion, celery, and a parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Veal, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Bone the veal, roll it up, and tie it with string.

  2. Put the bones, peppercorns, and salt into a stewpan with the cold water, bring to a boil, and skim the surface.

Steam the veal

  1. Cut the turnip and carrot into fancy shapes.

  2. Add the trimmings to the stock with sliced onions and celery.

  3. Lay the veal on top and steam gently for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Place the veal on a hot dish and cover with parsley sauce made from ½ pint veal stock and ½ pint milk.

  2. Garnish with boiled carrot and turnip pieces.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish; gentle steaming keeps its meat tender and moist.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the stock.
Celery
Contributes aroma and subtle flavour to the stock.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness to the stock and a colourful garnish.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and earthy flavour to the stock and garnish.

The step that matters

Steam gently, do not boil hard. Vigorous heat tightens the muscle proteins in veal and squeezes out its juices, leaving the meat dry and tough. A gentle heat lets the collagen soften slowly, keeping the veal tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, carrot, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, carrot, turnip, celery. 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 stewed veal recipes

Shoulder 25Loin 21Breast 15Fillet 10Knuckle 7Knuckle with Rice 4 See all 14 →

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