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A Cold Dish for Lunch

A cold layered dish of veal, bacon, and egg, boiled and cooled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Cold Dish for Lunch

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Slice the hard boiled egg and place it in the center of a bowl.

  2. Layer thin slices of raw veal on top, sprinkling with pepper, salt, and herbs.

  3. Add a layer of bacon, then continue alternating layers of veal and bacon, seasoning veal with mace.

  4. Press down the layers and tie a floured cloth tightly over the bowl.

Cook and serve

  1. Submerge the bowl in a pot of hot water and boil for 2 hours.

  2. Allow to cool 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. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the terrine and sets into firm, sliceable layers as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the layered meat moist during long cooking.
Hard boiled egg
Forms a pale centre that shows as a visible cross-section when the terrine is sliced.
Mixed herbs
Add aromatic flavor that permeates the layered meat during cooking.

The step that matters

Press down the layers and tie the cloth tightly. Pressing removes air gaps and packs the layers together, so the terrine holds its shape when cooled and sliced rather than crumbling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, veal, pepper, parsley, thyme, sage, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, veal, pepper, parsley, thyme, sage, flour. 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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