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Delicious Minced Veal

A baked veal meatloaf made with minced veal, egg, bread crumbs, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Delicious Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the cold roast veal and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Moisten the mixture with a beaten egg and gravy or water.

Cook and brown

  1. Put the mixture into a buttered dish, press down, cover, and place in a vessel of boiling water for at least an hour.

  2. Spread a beaten yolk of egg on top and sprinkle sifted bread crumbs over it.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Pour a little melted butter over the top and garnish with slices of lemon.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 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

Cold roast veal
Forms the bulk of the meatloaf and gives it its main flavour and body.
Beaten egg
Binds the chopped meat together so the loaf holds its shape when cut.
Gravy or water
Moistens the mixture so it stays tender rather than dry.
Beaten yolk of egg
Enriches the top layer and helps it set and brown in the oven.
Sifted bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the surface when baked.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown further.

The step that matters

Steaming in boiling water. The mixture must be fully heated through and kept covered so it cooks gently and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or skipping the cover can leave the centre underheated or the loaf dry.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

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