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Braised Veal

Braised veal cooked slowly with butter, onion, salt, pepper, and hot water, served hot or cold with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Braised Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Tie the veal to make it firm.

  2. Heat butter and onion shavings in a kettle or stone crock.

  3. Season the veal with salt and pepper, then brown it in the kettle, turning occasionally.

Braise and serve

  1. Cover and simmer the veal on medium heat for about 2.5 hours.

  2. Check the gravy; add hot water if needed.

  3. Serve the meat hot with gravy or cold with jelly-like gravy.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Veal + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,841 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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 shoulder
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long, slow simmering.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the meat brown and flavoring the gravy.
Onion shavings
Release sweetness and aroma as they cook in the butter, flavoring the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the veal. Searing the meat until well browned builds deep savory flavor through the Maillard reaction. Turning it occasionally ensures even color rather than pale or burnt patches.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, 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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