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Veal Birds

Veal Birds are veal pieces stuffed with bread crumbs, lemon juice, onion, egg yolk, herbs, and cooked in butter, lard, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Birds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal steak into square pieces about 3 inches long.

  2. Chop or grind the trimmed pieces and mix with bread crumbs, lemon juice, onion, egg yolk, thyme, savory or sage, salt, and pepper to make the stuffing.

  3. Take a small amount of stuffing and fold it into a square of veal, securing it with two toothpicks.

Brown and braise

  1. In a frying pan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of lard until smoking hot.

  2. Dust the veal birds with flour and fry them until golden brown all over.

  3. Pour 1 cup of sweet cream over the birds and cover tightly.

  4. Simmer on low heat for at least 20 minutes, then serve with the gravy from the pan.

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. Thyme + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together214 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + summer savorytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together115 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steak
Forms the wrapper and the main body of the dish, becoming tender during simmering.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the chopped veal into a soft, cohesive stuffing.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing ingredients together and adds richness to the filling.
Butter and lard
Provide fat for frying, helping the flour-dusted veal brown well.
Sweet cream
Forms the sauce with pan juices, adding moisture and richness during simmering.

The step that matters

Browning the floured veal birds. Frying in very hot fat until golden sets a browned crust on the flour coating, adding flavour and helping the birds hold their shape before the cream is added.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, lemon, egg, thyme, summer savory, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, lemon, egg, thyme, summer savory, 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.

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