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Pressed Veal or Chicken

A dish of stewed veal or chicken that is chopped, boiled, and pressed into a mold with butter, salt, pepper, egg, and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pressed Veal or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Cover the veal or chicken with water and stew slowly until the meat falls off the bones.

  2. Chop the meat finely.

  3. Boil the cooking liquid down to 1 cup.

Shape the mold

  1. Add the butter, salt, pepper, beaten egg, and allspice to the meat.

  2. Mix well and press into a mold.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or chicken
Forms the body of the dish and, with its bones, supplies the gelatin that sets it.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, moister texture in the pressed meat.
Egg
Binds the chopped meat so the mixture holds its shape when pressed and sliced.
Allspice
Adds a warm, spicy aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Boil the cooking liquid down to 1 cup. Stewing draws gelatin from bones and connective tissue into the liquid. Reducing it concentrates that gelatin, so the pressed meat sets firm as it cools instead of crumbling.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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