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Moulded Minced Veal

A baked mould of finely minced veal mixed with bacon, lemon peel, onion, toast, and spices, bound with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Moulded Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the skin and outer pieces from the veal and mince it very fine.

  2. Chop the bacon and mix it with the minced veal.

  3. Add the lemon peel, onion, salt, pepper, mace, and soaked toast to the mixture.

  4. Bind the mixture with the beaten egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a mold and fill it with the meat mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Carefully turn it out of the mold and serve with brown gravy.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the loaf, giving it a firm, sliceable texture once cooked.
Egg
Binds the minced meat together so the loaf holds its shape when turned out.
Toast soaked in milk
Adds moisture, keeping the minced meat tender rather than dry as it bakes.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that enriches the lean minced veal.

The step that matters

Bind the mixture with the beaten egg. Egg proteins set when heated and hold the minced meat together; without enough binding the loaf can crumble when turned out of the mold.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, onion, pepper, milk, 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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