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Cold Veal

A veal dish simmered in butter, flour, broth, parsley, tarragon, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,563 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cold Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Arrange the cold veal slices on a dish.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook until it turns a brownish color.

  4. Add the chopped parsley, tarragon, salt, pepper, and broth.

  5. Boil the mixture for 15 minutes.

Warm and serve

  1. If using a whole piece of veal, cut it into slices and add to the pan to warm.

  2. If using leftover pieces, simply place them in the pan and serve with the sauce when warm.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 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

Butter
Provides fat and richness, and with the flour forms the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux, giving the sauce body and, once browned, a nutty flavour.
Broth
Forms the liquid of the sauce, carrying the seasoning and moisture to the veal.
Chopped parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the sauce.
Tarragon
Adds a distinct aniseed-like aroma that flavours the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. The flour must be cooked until it turns brownish to remove its raw starchy taste and build nutty flavour. Stopping early leaves the sauce tasting floury, while overcooking can scorch it and make it bitter.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Sagefits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, pepper, parsley. 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 cold veal recipes

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