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Braised Veal

Braised veal shoulder cooked slowly in butter and onion, seasoned with salt and pepper, served hot with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 shoulder to make it firm.

  2. In a kettle or stone crock, heat the butter and onion until hot.

  3. Season the veal with salt and pepper, then add it to the kettle.

Braise

  1. Cover tightly and cook over medium heat until browned on both sides, turning occasionally.

  2. Reduce heat and simmer for about 2.5 hours.

  3. Check the gravy; if not enough, add hot water.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat hot with gravy or cold with the meat.

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
Slow braising breaks down connective tissue, leaving the meat tender and moist.
Butter
Fat that carries heat into the pan and helps brown the surface of the veal.
Onion
Flavors the butter and fat as it heats, adding aroma to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the veal before simmering. Cooking over medium heat with the lid on until both sides brown builds deep flavor through browning reactions. Rushing this leaves the gravy pale and bland.

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.

More braised veal recipes

Neck 27Fillet 11Breast 10Cutlets 4Neck with Oyster Sauce 3Shoulder 3 See all 22 →

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