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Veal

A veal fillet stuffed with oyster forcemeat, braised with bacon, vegetables, and stock, served over stewed greens with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut a long piece from the fillet of veal.

  2. Flatten it with a chopper.

  3. Make an incision in the underside and stuff it with forcemeat containing oysters.

  4. Fasten the incision with a small, clean wire skewer.

  5. Lard it neatly with fat bacon.

Braise

  1. Place it in a stewpan with a little weak stock and stew until brown and tender.

  2. In another stewpan, combine carrots, onions, turnips, celery, allspice, cloves, and pepper, and add slices of fat bacon.

  3. Add the fricandeau and some good veal stock.

  4. Let it simmer until the veal is very tender and the gravy is nearly reduced.

Serve

  1. Serve the veal on a bed of stewed sorrel or stewed spinach.

  2. Make it slightly acidic with lemon juice.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fillet of veal
Forms the main meat, which turns tender through slow stewing.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture that keeps the lean veal from drying out during stewing.
Oysters
Forcemeat ingredient that adds savory richness and moisture to the stuffing.
Good veal stock
Provides liquid that becomes the gravy, adding savory depth as it reduces.
Carrots
Sweetness and aromatic body to the braising liquid and gravy.
Onions
Build savory aroma and sweetness in the braising base as they cook down.

The step that matters

Simmer until tender without boiling hard. Gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in the veal slowly, keeping the meat moist. A hard boil toughens muscle fibres and can leave the gravy cloudy and the meat stringy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, oyster, carrot, turnip, celery, allspice, clove. 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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