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Veal Pottage

A hearty veal stew with herbs, mace, and vegetables, served with a small roll.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 remaining bone and meat to stew in 5 pints of water with the onion, herbs, mace, and whole pepper for 4 to 5 hours.

  2. Strain the broth and let it cool overnight.

  3. Remove the fat and sediment from the jelly.

Finish the pottage

  1. Simmer the jelly with diced turnips, celery, sea-kale, and Jerusalem artichokes until tender, seasoning with salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Mix the flour with the cream and boil for a few minutes.

  3. Serve the pottage with a small roll simmered in the soup.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 knuckle
Stews into the broth, giving it body and a rich meaty flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness to the broth as it stews slowly.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the finished broth taste rounder and richer.
Flour
Thickens the cream so the pottage becomes smooth rather than thin.
Cream
Adds richness and softness, with the flour giving it body.
Small roll
Soaks up the broth and softens, adding bulk to each serving.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the jelly. Cooling the broth overnight lets the fat set on the surface so it lifts off cleanly. Fat left in the broth can make the pottage greasy and cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

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

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