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Veal, Minced, and Macaroni

A casserole of minced veal and macaroni baked with bread crumbs and eggs, served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal, Minced, and Macaroni

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the macaroni

  1. Soak the macaroni in water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the macaroni in salted water until tender.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the veal into thin slices, removing fat, skin, and bone.

  2. Mince the veal finely and mix with minced ham, if using.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, white pepper, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  4. Add the bread crumbs and bind with 1 or 2 eggs.

Assemble and steam

  1. Butter a mold and wind the drained macaroni around the inside.

  2. Place the meat mixture in the center of the mold.

  3. Cover with a dish and steam over boiling water for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out onto a dish and serve with brown gravy poured around.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the outer shell that holds the filling together and gives the dish its structure.
Veal
Provides the main meaty body and savory flavor of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the minced meat and crumbs so the filling holds its shape when turned out.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the minced meat into a cohesive filling.
Ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Bind the filling with eggs and crumbs. Too little binder leaves the minced meat crumbly, so it may fall apart when the mold is turned out. Eggs set during steaming and help hold the filling together.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, nutmeg, lemon, bread, egg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, nutmeg, lemon, bread, egg, 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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