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Stewed Veal with Tomatoes

A stew of veal ham cooked with tomatoes, flour, lard, and seasonings, served with rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Veal with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Brown and stew

  1. Brown the flour and lard together in a pot.

  2. Add the veal and pour in the strained tomatoes.

  3. Season with salt, red pepper, and thyme.

  4. Add hot water and cook for 2½ hours, leaving enough liquid for gravy.

Serve

  1. Serve with steamed rice.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Flour + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal ham
Main meat; slow simmering breaks down its connective tissue, making it tender.
Flour
Browned with lard, it forms a roux that thickens the gravy and adds nutty flavour.
Lard
Fat that carries the browning and gives the stew richness and a savoury base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, shaping the flavour and texture of the sauce.
Hot water
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the veal and becomes the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the flour and lard. Flour and fat scorch quickly. Stop once it is a rich brown; burnt flour tastes bitter and darkens the gravy unpleasantly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, flour, pepper, thyme. 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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