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Bombarded Veal

A veal fillet stuffed with a forcemeat of breadcrumbs, bacon, anchovies, herbs, and other ingredients, baked and served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Bombarded Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove the bone from the fillet of veal.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing the bread crumbs, bacon, anchovies, marjoram, lemon peel, parsley, salt, cayenne pepper, nutmeg, egg, and cream.

  3. Fill the cavity left by the bone with the forcemeat.

  4. Make cuts around the fillet about 1 inch apart. Fill the cuts with forcemeat, spinach, and a mixture of bread crumbs, oysters, and beef marrow.

  5. Wrap the fillet in caul fat and place it in a deep pot with 1 pint of water.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Make a coarse paste to cover the pot to prevent unpleasant flavors.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked through.

  3. Skim off the fat from the pot and transfer the gravy to a stew pan.

  4. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, artichokes, browning sauce, morels, and truffles to the gravy.

  5. Thicken the sauce with butter and flour, then bring to a gentle boil.

  6. Serve the veal on a dish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal fillet
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the stuffing while it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb moisture so the stuffing holds together.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so it sets firm when cooked.
Bacon fat
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and richly flavored during baking.
Butter and flour
Thicken the gravy into a smooth sauce that coats the veal.
Morels and truffles
Add earthy, aromatic flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through, with the pot covered by a paste lid. Veal must reach a safe internal temperature throughout. The sealed paste lid traps steam and moisture so the meat stays tender rather than drying out in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, marjoram, lemon, parsley, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, marjoram, lemon, parsley, pepper, egg, cream. 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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