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Roast Veal

Roast veal seasoned with salt and pepper, baked until cooked, served with parsley and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Roast Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the veal in a roasting pan and pour 1 cup of hot water over it.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Roast and serve

  1. Bake thoroughly for 20 minutes per pound.

  2. Garnish with parsley sprigs and serve with currant jelly.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + curranttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Parsley + curranttop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and juicy as it roasts slowly.
Hot water
Adds moisture to the roasting pan, helping keep the meat from drying out in the oven.
Currant jelly
Provides sweetness and acidity that contrast with the rich, savory roasted meat.

The step that matters

Bake thoroughly for 20 minutes per pound. Veal is lean and dries out quickly, so timing by weight matters. Cooking until fully done, without overshooting, keeps the meat tender and juicy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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