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Veal Patties

Veal patties made from stewed veal, salt pork, celery, and a thin batter, wrapped in flaky 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 in a pot for 10-15 minutes.

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

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

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Assemble and serve

  1. Roll out the flaky crust.

  2. Cut the crust into rounds the size of small saucers.

  3. Cut the center of each round halfway through to create a cover.

  4. Place a spoonful of the stew in each crust.

  5. Cover with the top.

  6. 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
Forms the main meaty filling that gives the patties their body and savory flavor.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor to the stew as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the stew with the egg and milk batter, giving it body.
Egg yolk
Enriches the batter and helps bind it smoothly into the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and egg batter. Flour must be whisked into a smooth, thin batter before it goes into the hot stew; otherwise it clumps. Stirring it in and bringing the mixture to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken evenly.

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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