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Jellied Veal

A gelatinous dish made by simmering veal with vegetables, spices, and broth, then setting it in a mold with hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Jellied Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Wipe the veal and place it in a pot with enough water to cover.

  2. Tie the vegetables and spices in a cloth and add to the pot.

  3. Cook slowly until the meat falls from the bone, adding salt when the meat is partially cooked.

  4. Strain the broth and reduce it to 1 quart by boiling uncovered.

  5. Add seasoning and lemon juice to taste.

Set the mold

  1. Decorate the bottom of a mold with slices of hard‑boiled eggs and add a little broth to set the decoration.

  2. Once set, add broth to create a layer ½ inch thick.

  3. When that layer is set, fill the mold with the veal, placing hard‑boiled egg slices between the meat.

  4. Pour in enough broth to fill the mold and refrigerate to harden.

  5. Once set, place a weight on the veal to make it more solid.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Provides the meat and, as it cooks down, the gelatin that lets the broth set firm.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the decorative slices and mild, firm texture between the layers of meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the savoury broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to 1 quart. Boiling uncovered concentrates the broth's flavour and gelatin. Too little reduction leaves it weak and slow to set, while over-reducing can make it overly salty once seasoning is added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, clove, 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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