Name: Spiced Veal
Ingredients: 1 lb cold loin of veal; ½ cup spiced vinegar; ½ teaspoon Cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 teaspoon ground allspice; 2 whole cloves; 1 sprig of mace

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cold loin of veal into pieces about 1 inch square.
In a saucepan, combine vinegar, Cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, ground allspice, cloves, and mace.

Pickle and serve

Boil the mixture for a few minutes.
Pour the boiling spiced vinegar over the veal pieces until covered.
Serve hot or 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.

Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,189 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal loin: Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and moist as it is covered in hot liquid.
Spiced vinegar: Acidity that flavours and partly firms the surface of the veal pieces.
Ground allspice: Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the vinegar.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, vinegar, pepper, allspice, clove):

Marjoramfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Thymefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, vinegar, pepper, allspice, clove. 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.