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Prepared Veal

A veal loaf mixed with salt pork, sage, crackers, and eggs, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Prepared Veal

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

  1. Chop the veal steak and salt pork together with the sage, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add the pulverized crackers and eggs, then mix well.

Bake

  1. Form the mixture into a loaf and place it in a two-quart pan.

  2. Add a little water to the pan and sprinkle the top with rolled crackers.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Let cool before slicing and serve cold.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Veal + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steak
Provides the main meat body that gives the loaf its structure and savory flavor.
Eggs
Bind the meat and crackers together and set during baking to hold the loaf's shape.
Salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the lean veal moist and adds savory flavor.
Crackers
Absorb juices and help bind the loaf, giving it a tender texture.

The step that matters

Let cool before slicing. Cutting a hot loaf too soon can make it crumble, because the eggs and crackers need time to set as the loaf cools and firms up.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, 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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