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Stewed Veal

A slow‑cooked veal stew with onions, bay leaf, nutmeg, and a gravy thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the veal

  1. Heat the drippings in a kettle until very hot.

  2. Add the veal, season with pepper, salt, bay leaf, and nutmeg, and brown all over.

  3. Add the sliced onion and let it brown.

Stew and thicken

  1. Cover the veal with boiling water and stew for about an hour, maintaining enough water to create a nice gravy.

  2. Stir in the sherry (or white wine) and thicken the gravy with flour mixed in a little water.

  3. Let it boil for a few minutes 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Nutmeg + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,246 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Lean meat that becomes tender during long, moist stewing and forms the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body and a smooth, coating texture.
Sherry or white wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, savory gravy.
Onion
Browns and releases sweetness that deepens the flavor of the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the veal. Searing the meat in very hot drippings creates browned surface flavors through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or adding liquid too early causes steaming instead, leaving the gravy pale and flat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, sherry, flour. 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 stewed veal recipes

Shoulder 25Loin 21Breast 15Fillet 10Knuckle 7Knuckle with Rice 4 See all 14 →

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