Skip to main content
Main

Veau Aux Olives

Veau aux Olives is a veal roll filled with ham, breadcrumbs, and herbs, simmered in a lemon‑nutmeg gravy with olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veau Aux Olives

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rolls

  1. Remove the skin and fibers from the flank of veal and wipe it clean.

  2. Pound the veal strips carefully with a few strokes.

  3. Mix the cold veal, cold ham, bread crumbs, parsley, onion, egg, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and nutmeg together.

  4. Put a layer of the mixture in the center of each veal strip, roll them up, and tie securely.

Brown and simmer

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the rolls and turn them until evenly browned all over.

  3. Add enough stock to half‑cover the rolls, cover tightly, and simmer gently for 30 to 40 minutes.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove the rolls to a hot dish.

  2. Bring the strained gravy to a boil, thicken with corn starch blended with cold water, and boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Add stoned olives, pepper, and salt to the gravy, pour over the rolls, and serve.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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
Forms the outer wrapper and becomes tender during slow simmering in stock.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and texture.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the rolls and enriches the flavor.
Corn starch (in the method)
Thickens the strained gravy to coat the rolls.

The step that matters

Simmering the rolls gently and covered. Gentle, covered simmering keeps the connective tissue in the veal softening without boiling the meat tough or drying it out. A vigorous boil can toughen the meat and break up the rolls.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, bread, parsley, egg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, bread, parsley, egg, pepper, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes