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Cold Veal

Cold veal slices served with a piquant sauce made from butter, flour, herbs, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. In a pan, melt butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour and cook until brown.

  3. Add parsley, tarragon, salt, pepper, and broth; boil for 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cold veal slices on a dish.

  2. Serve with a piquant sauce of your choice.

  3. If using a whole piece of veal, slice it and add to the pan; serve warm.

  4. If using leftover slices, simply warm them in the sauce.

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

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

  3. Tarragon + peppertop 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

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish and is served cold or warmed through.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds richness to the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter until browned.
Broth
Provides the liquid that becomes the savoury body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until brown. Flour cooked in butter must brown enough to lose its raw taste and to add a nutty colour, but if it burns it turns bitter. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps it even before the broth is added.

Swap the tarragon

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

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

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

Ragout 13Pie 6Gateau 4Scallops 4Cake 3Mince 3 See all 2 →

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