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Small Pain De Veau, Or, Veal Cake

A small veal loaf made with veal, beef suet, ham, spices, and lemon rind, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Acton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Small Pain De Veau, Or, Veal Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop a pound and a quarter of veal, free from fat and skin, very finely.

  2. Chop six ounces of beef suet very finely.

  3. Add a teaspoonful of salt, a full third as much white pepper, and a full third as much mace or nutmeg, with the grated rind of half a lemon.

  4. Mix the ingredients thoroughly with a chopping knife until well combined.

  5. If desired, add three ounces of lean boiled ham minced small to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Press the mixture smoothly into a small round baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven for an hour and a quarter.

  3. When done, the cake should be fine light brown and like a cake in appearance.

  4. Lift the cake into a clean hot dish and serve plain, or with a little brown gravy in a tureen.

  5. If baking in a hot oven, the meat will shrink to half its size and become very dry.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

522Calories
54 gProtein
30 gFat
6 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 7 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Beef100g cooked250
Pork100g cooked242
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Acton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal (in the method)
Forms the main body of the cake and sets into a firm, sliceable texture when baked.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the finely chopped meat moist and tender during baking.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury flavour and a little extra body to the meat mixture.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant aroma and a light brightness to the meat.

The step that matters

Baking oven temperature. A hot oven shrinks the meat to half its size and dries it out, so bake at a moderate heat to keep the cake moist and tender.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, lemon, mace, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, lemon, mace, nutmeg. 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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