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Veal Loaf

A baked loaf made from chopped veal, sweet milk, pork fat, eggs, cracker crumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Loaf

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

  1. Chop or grind the veal.

  2. Crush the square cracker finely.

  3. Beat 2 of the eggs.

Shape and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine veal, pork, beaten eggs, crushed cracker, milk, salt, and pepper. Mix well.

  2. Shape the mixture into a long, round loaf and place it in a pan.

  3. Beat the remaining egg and spread it over the top of the loaf.

  4. Dust with cracker crumbs and add small bits of butter on top.

  5. Pour a little hot water into the pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour, basting occasionally.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the bulk of the loaf and provides the meaty body of the dish.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set during baking to hold the loaf's shape.
Cracker
Absorbs moisture and milk, helping the loaf stay tender and hold together.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the loaf moist and adds rich flavour as it cooks.

The step that matters

Basting with hot water in the pan. Veal is very lean, so it dries out easily in the oven. Adding hot water to the pan and basting create steam and moisture around the loaf, keeping the surface from drying and toughening.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, pork, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, pork, egg, butter. 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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