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Veal and Ham Paste

A spread made from finely pounded veal and ham mixed with butter, spices, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Pound the dressed veal and ham very fine, moistening with melted butter.

  2. Add grated nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little lemon peel.

  3. Heat the mixture on the fire, moistening it with good stock.

  4. When hot, press it into small pots and let it cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour melted butter over the top.

  2. When ready to serve, remove the grease and turn it out of the mold.

  3. Garnish with very green curled parsley or your choice of garnish.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Dressed veal
Forms the main body of the paste, giving it a soft, tender texture when pounded fine.
Dressed ham
Adds savoury flavour and a firmer, more distinct texture to the paste.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and forms a protective layer over the top once potted.
Good stock
Moistens the mixture during heating, adding savoury depth and keeping it smooth.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture on the fire, moistening it with good stock. Adding stock while heating keeps the finely pounded meat moist and prevents it from drying or becoming crumbly as it warms.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, butter, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, butter, pepper, lemon. 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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