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Lunch Dish

A gelatinized veal dish with sliced eggs and lemon, seasoned with salt, nutmeg, pepper, and clove.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lunch Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the veal steak with water and simmer slowly until reduced to 1 pint.

  2. Remove the meat when tender and cut it into dice.

Set and serve

  1. Wet a mould in cold water.

  2. Place the veal, sliced eggs, and lemon in the mould.

  3. Season with salt, nutmeg, pepper, and clove.

  4. Strain the broth into the mould.

  5. Set on ice and turn out onto a platter.

  6. If the liquid does not jelly, reheat and add gelatine.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steak
Supplies the meat and natural gelatine that help the broth set into a firm jelly.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, pale texture and visible structure to the sliced aspic.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly when the broth does not gel on its own.

The step that matters

Straining and chilling the broth. The broth must be reduced enough to carry a strong jelly. Too much liquid or too little chilling leaves the aspic soft and unable to hold its shape when turned out.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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