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Veal Loaf

A loaf made from finely chopped veal and pork mixed with butter, crackers, egg, salt, pepper, and optional lemon juice, baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and shape the loaf

  1. In a large bowl, combine the veal, pork, butter, powdered crackers, beaten egg, salt, pepper, and lemon juice if using. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

  2. Mold the mixture into a loaf shape.

Bake

  1. Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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 gives it a mild, tender meaty body.
Pork
Adds fat that keeps the loaf moist as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the loaf moist and tender.
Powdered crackers
Absorbs juices and binds the meat so the loaf holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together as it cooks and sets.

The step that matters

Mixing the meat with the other ingredients. Mixing thoroughly spreads the binder, egg and crackers, evenly through the meat so the loaf holds together when sliced. Overworking finely chopped meat can make it dense and firm, so combine until evenly mixed and no further.

“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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