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Stuffed Fillet of Veal with Bacon

A veal fillet stuffed with breadcrumbs, pork, herbs, and bacon, then boiled and roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stuffed Fillet of Veal with Bacon

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 veal.

  2. Shape the veal into a round with skewers and secure the shape with soft twine.

  3. Fill the cavity with a mixture of breadcrumbs, chopped pork, thyme, parsley, pepper, salt, and lemon peel.

  4. Cover the top with bacon slices, tying them in place with twine.

Cook and coat

  1. Place the stuffed fillet in a pot with boiling water and cook slowly for 2 hours.

  2. Remove the fillet from the pot and place it in a dripping pan.

  3. Remove the twine from the fillet.

  4. Brush the meat with raw egg and coat it with rolled crackers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the fillet in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes, basting often with gravy.

  2. Serve the fillet on a hot dish with the bacon around it.

  3. Strain and thicken the gravy to 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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 and bacon.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up juices in the stuffing, keeping it moist and holding its shape.
Chopped pork
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it juicy during cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the surface of the lean veal.
Raw egg
Binds the cracker coating so it adheres and browns in the oven.
Rolled crackers
Form a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the fillet.

The step that matters

Cook slowly in boiling water. Veal is lean and can turn dry and tough if cooked too hard or too long. Gentle simmering keeps the meat tender and juicy before the crust is added and browned in the oven.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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