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Fried Veal Patties

Fried veal patties wrapped in puff pastry, seasoned with ham, egg, mace, lemon peel, and served browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fried Veal Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine minced veal and ham. Add chopped hard-boiled egg, mace, salt, pepper, and lemon peel.

  2. Moisten the mixture with gravy and cream.

Wrap and cook

  1. Roll out puff pastry thinly and cut into squares or rounds.

  2. Place the meat mixture between two pastry pieces and pinch the edges to seal.

  3. Fry in hot oil until light brown, about 15 minutes.

  4. Alternatively, bake in patty pans brushed with egg yolk at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Cold veal
Forms the main meaty body of the filling.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the meat filling.
Hard-boiled egg
Binds the filling and adds a soft, tender texture.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling tender.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, layered wrapper that browns when fried or baked.

The step that matters

Pinch the edges to seal the pastry. A tight seal keeps the moist filling inside while frying or baking; gaps let juices escape and can make the pastry soggy or greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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