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Beef Cheese

A boiled beef and veal mixture set into a jelly, sliced like head cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and veal are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,890 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Place the boneless shank meat in a pot and cover with water.

  2. Cook for 1.5 hours until boiling.

  3. Add veal bones or veal shank and continue boiling until the meat falls apart.

  4. Remove the bones and chop the meat.

Set and serve

  1. Season with salt and place in a dish.

  2. If desired, add vinegar and spices while hot.

  3. Let it cool, then turn it out and slice like head cheese.

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. Meat + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,890 recipes

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

  2. Meat + vinegartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,428 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methylbutanol (malty, whiskey).

  3. Veal + vinegartop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together948 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef shank
Provides the meat and connective tissue that breaks down into the chopped body of the dish.
Veal bones or veal shank
Adds gelatin-rich collagen that helps the cooking liquid set as it cools.

The step that matters

Add the veal bones or shank and boil until the meat falls apart. Collagen in bones and connective tissue breaks down into gelatin during long simmering. Too little cooking leaves the meat tough and the liquid too weak to set when cooled.

“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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