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Italian Cheese

A gelatinized veal dish flavored with cloves, allspice, and salt, served with sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice 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 ↓

Italian Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the knuckle of veal with 2 quarts of water.

  2. Boil until tender.

  3. Remove the meat from the bone and let it cool.

  4. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  5. Strain the liquid and return it to the kettle.

  6. Season with cloves, allspice, and salt.

  7. Boil until it jellies.

Mold and serve

  1. Line a mold with sliced hard boiled eggs.

  2. Pour the jelly mixture into the mold.

  3. When cold, turn out and slice 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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Veal + clovetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Veal + allspicetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together509 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Allspice + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal knuckle
Releases collagen into the water, which sets as a gel when the liquid cools.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide a firm, sliced contrast pattern visible in the finished set jelly.

The step that matters

Boil until it jellies. The liquid must be reduced enough that its gelatin concentration is high enough to set firmly when cold. Too little boiling leaves a loose jelly that will not hold its shape when turned out and sliced.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, allspice, egg. 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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