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Delicious Minced Veal

A baked minced veal loaf seasoned with pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon peel, and topped with breadcrumbs and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Delicious Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold roast veal and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Moisten the mixture with a beaten egg and gravy or water.

  3. Put the mixture into a buttered dish.

  4. Press down, cover, and set the dish in a vessel of boiling water for at least 1 hour.

Brown and serve

  1. Spread a beaten egg yolk on top.

  2. Sprinkle sifted bread crumbs over the egg yolk.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Pour a little melted butter over the top.

  5. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast veal
Forms the main body of the meatloaf and gives it its meaty flavour.
Beaten egg
Binds the chopped veal together so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Gravy or water
Moistens the mixture so it stays tender rather than dry.
Beaten egg yolk
Enriches the top layer and helps it set and brown evenly.
Sifted bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the top of the loaf.
Melted butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich surface flavour.

The step that matters

Set the dish in boiling water for at least 1 hour. Gentle, moist heat from the surrounding water cooks the loaf evenly and keeps the chopped veal from drying out. Letting it cook fully before browning helps the egg bind the mixture firmly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, lemon, egg, butter, bread. 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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