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Veal Patties

Veal patties made with stewed veal, salt pork, celery, and a thin batter, served with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Veal Patties

Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the veal and salt pork gently for 10-15 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, celery, and yellow top.

  3. Stir in flour, egg yolk, and enough milk to form a thin batter.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Make patties from the flaky crust, cutting them round like small saucers.

  2. Cut the center of each patty halfway through to create a cover.

  3. Fill each crust with a spoonful of the stew, place the top on, and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Celery + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender when stewed gently.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stew as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the stew so it holds together in the crust.
Egg yolk
Enriches the batter and helps bind the filling.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boil. Once flour is stirred into the stew, it must reach a boil so the starch thickens fully. Without that, the filling stays thin and runs out of the patties.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, flour, egg, milk. 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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