Skip to main content
Main

Bombarded Veal

A veal fillet stuffed with a forcemeat mixture and served with a sauce of mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, artichoke, browning sauce, morels, and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. 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 forcemeat

  1. Remove the bone from the fillet of veal.

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

  3. Make cuts around the fillet about 1 inch apart.

  4. Fill the cavity of the fillet with the forcemeat.

  5. Fill the cuts with forcemeat.

Stuff and bake

  1. Add boiled and squeezed spinach.

  2. Add a mixture of bread crumbs, chopped oysters, and beef marrow.

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

  4. Cover the pot with a coarse paste to prevent unpleasant flavors.

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

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Skim off the fat from the cooking liquid and transfer it to a saucepan.

  2. Add mushroom ketchup, lemon pickle, artichoke quarters, browning sauce, morels, and truffles to the saucepan.

  3. Thicken the sauce with butter rolled in flour and bring to a gentle boil.

  4. Place the veal on a serving 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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  5. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 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 fillet
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through while staying moist inside the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the egg and cream to bind the forcemeat and keep it tender.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together when sliced.
Bacon fat
Adds fat and richness, keeping the forcemeat moist during baking.
Morels
Contribute an earthy, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Butter and flour
Thicken the sauce by forming a roux-like paste that gives body.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce gently. Flour rolled in butter must be stirred in and brought to a gentle boil so the starch swells and thickens smoothly; boiling hard or adding it lumpy can leave the sauce grainy or thin.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, marjoram, lemon, thyme, parsley, 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.

More stuffed veal fillet recipes

with Bacon 7 See all 27 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes