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Blanquette De Veau

A creamy veal stew with butter, flour, stock, eggs, and cream, finished with parsley, thyme, and optional nutmeg or lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Blanquette De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, salt, pepper, parsley, and thyme until combined.

  3. Add the veal pieces and moisten with stock.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, mix the eggs with the cream and stir into the stew.

  2. Add grated nutmeg or lemon peel for extra flavor, if desired.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the tender meat that the sauce coats and surrounds.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and starts the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that moistens the veal and forms the base of the sauce.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce gently and add richness when stirred in off the heat.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the sauce a silky texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream mixture. Egg proteins set when heated, so the mixture can curdle or turn grainy if the stew is boiling. Stir it in just before serving, with the stew hot but not boiling, to keep the sauce smooth and lightly thickened.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, egg, cream. 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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