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Pressed Veal or Chicken

Pressed Veal or Chicken is a pressed meat dish made by stewing meat, reducing broth, mixing with butter, pepper, allspice, egg, and pressing into mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pressed Veal or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Place the veal or chickens in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Stew slowly until the meat falls off the bone.

  3. Remove the meat and chop it finely.

  4. Boil the cooking liquid down until you have 1 cup.

Assemble and press

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

  2. Slice the hard-boiled egg and layer it in a mold.

  3. Press the meat mixture into the mold.

Serve

  1. When ready to serve, garnish with celery tops or parsley.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or chickens
Provides the meat that is cooked, chopped, and pressed into a firm loaf.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the pressed meat a moister, softer texture.
Beaten egg
Binds the chopped meat together so the mixture holds its shape when pressed.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds a sliced layer inside the mold, giving the pressed loaf a decorative and textural contrast.

Swap the allspice

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

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

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