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Pressed Veal

Pressed veal is a chilled dish made from boiled veal, salt pork or ham, herbs, and reduced stock, then sliced thin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pressed Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Cover the veal and salt pork or ham with water and boil until the meat is ready to come off the bones.

  2. Remove gristle and bones, then chop the meat finely.

Combine and set

  1. Add onion juice, chopped parsley, summer savory, salt, and pepper to the meat.

  2. Add the mixture to the reduced cooking liquid, which should be boiled down to 1 cup.

  3. Pour everything into a mold and pack closely.

  4. Refrigerate until firm, then slice very thin to serve.

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. Parsley + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat and, as it cooks, gelatin that helps the mixture set firm when chilled.
Salt pork or ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and fat to the cooking liquid that carries into the pressed meat.
Summer savory
Adds a peppery, herbal aroma that seasons the chopped meat.

The step that matters

Boiling the cooking liquid down to 1 cup. The reduced liquid is what binds the chopped meat together. Gelatin from the bones and connective tissue concentrates as water evaporates, so too much liquid leaves the mold loose and unable to hold its shape when sliced.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, parsley, summer savory, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, parsley, summer savory, pepper. 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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