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Baked Veal Ham

A layered baked dish of veal, ham, and eggs seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, thyme, and anchovy or Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Veal Ham

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Bone the breast of veal.

  2. Chop the veal meat very fine.

  3. Chop an equal quantity of cold boiled ham and the cold boiled eggs.

Layer and bake

  1. Butter a deep pan and add a layer of veal.

  2. Sprinkle the veal layer with salt, pepper, thyme, and anchovy or Worcestershire sauce.

  3. Add a layer of ham sprinkled with egg.

  4. Continue layering with both fat and lean of the ham.

  5. Cover and bake at 300°F (150°C) for four hours.

Serve

  1. When done, place a weight on top and serve in thin slices.

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 + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Ham + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together256 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the lean, firm base layers that set into a sliceable loaf when baked.
Cold boiled ham
Adds savory flavor and fat that keeps the layers moist during slow baking.
Cold boiled eggs
Adds body and a firm, sliceable texture to the layered filling.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds richness to the bottom layer.

The step that matters

Cover and bake low and slow. Baking at a gentle 300°F for a long time lets the meat cook through and bind without drying or toughening. Too high a heat would toughen the proteins and dry the loaf out.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, egg, butter, pepper, anchovy. 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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