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Veal Loaf

A baked loaf of veal mixed with salt pork, crackers, eggs, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Veal Loaf

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Shape the loaf

  1. In a large bowl, combine the veal, salt pork, rolled crackers, eggs, black pepper, sage, mace or nutmeg, and salt. Mix well and shape the mixture into a loaf.

  2. Place the loaf in a baking dish and baste it with melted butter mixed with water. Sprinkle a small quantity of rolled crackers on top of the loaf.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 3 hours.

  2. Let it cool before slicing thinly to 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw veal
Forms the main body of the loaf, giving it substance and a sliceable texture.
Raw salt pork
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean veal from drying out during baking.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and fat, helping the loaf stay tender and hold together.

The step that matters

Let it cool before slicing. A meat loaf set by baking firms up as it cools, so slicing too early can make it crumble. Cooling lets the proteins and fats settle, giving clean, thin slices.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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