Skip to main content
Main

To Pot Veal or Chicken with Ham

A pot dish of veal or chicken layered with ham, bacon, forcemeat, and seasoned with garlic, Cayenne pepper, and herbs, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Pot Veal or Chicken with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound cold veal or white chicken.

  2. Layer the pounded meat with shredded ham in a pot. Press each layer down. Cover each layer with butter.

  3. Cut long thin pieces of veal. Beat the veal pieces.

  4. Place a piece of thin bacon on each veal piece. Spread forcemeat seasoned with garlic and Cayenne on the bacon. Roll the bacon and forcemeat tightly. Secure the roll with a skewer. Rub egg over the rolls.

  5. Fry the rolls until golden brown.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer hard-boiled egg yolks in a separate pot. Layer chopped parsley. Layer veal. Layer ham. Season each layer with pepper and salt.

  2. Cover the pot with water. Add about 1 ounce of batter on top. Tie the pot with double paper.

  3. Bake for about an hour. Press down with a spoon.

  4. Let cool before serving.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or white chicken
Provides the main meat structure and savory body of the stew.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky flavor and a firmer meaty texture between the layers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the layers moist during baking.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat and help the rolls hold together and brown when fried.
Batter
Forms a topping that seals the pot and helps trap moisture while baking.

The step that matters

Roll the bacon and forcemeat tightly. Loose rolls can unravel or leave gaps during frying and baking. Tight rolling keeps the filling compact so it holds its shape and cooks evenly.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

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

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes