Skip to main content
Main

Pressed Veal

A pressed veal dish made by mixing cooked veal with crackers, egg, butter, seasoning, and cooking liquid, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pressed Veal

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

  1. Cook the veal until tender, then chop it finely.

Mix and pack

  1. Mix the chopped veal with the rolled crackers, egg(s), melted butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add enough of the cooking liquor to moisten the mixture well.

  3. Pack the mixture tightly into a small buttered crock.

Bake and press

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Place a weight on top and let it cool.

  3. Prepare this dish the day 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  4. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

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

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 dish, providing the meaty texture once cooked and chopped.
Rolled crackers
Absorb liquid and bind the chopped meat so the mixture holds together when pressed.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mixture.
Cooking liquor
Moistens the mixture so it stays tender rather than dry after baking.

The step that matters

Packing and pressing the mixture. Packing the mixture tightly and weighting it while cooling removes air pockets and compresses the mass, so it sets into a firm, sliceable block instead of crumbling.

“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.

More pressed veal recipes

or Chicken 5 See all 26 →

You might also like

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