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Veal Pottage

A slow‑cooked veal stew with herbs, mace, and optional vegetables, finished with a cream and flour roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Pottage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Remove all the meat from the knuckle of veal for cutlets and set the remainder to stew.

  2. Add the onion, herbs, mace, whole pepper, and water to the pot.

  3. Cover and simmer on low heat for 4 to 5 hours.

  4. Strain the broth and let it cool overnight.

Finish the soup

  1. Skim off the fat and sediment from the jelly.

  2. Simmer the jelly with diced vegetables until tender, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix flour with cream and add the butter.

  4. Boil the mixture for a few minutes.

  5. Let a small roll simmer in the soup before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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 knuckle
Gives the broth body and gelatin, so it sets to a jelly as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it lends body to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the flour and cream mixture. Flour thickens only when it is heated enough for its starch to swell. Boiling for a few minutes cooks out the raw flour taste and sets the thickness, while the cream must be stirred well to keep it from curdling or lumping.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, pepper, flour, cream, butter, walnut. 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.

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