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Potted Veal

A veal dish cooked with butter, spices, pickled tongue, and eggs, then baked and topped with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine veal, butter, lemon juice, pepper, salt, mace, bay leaf, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, mushroom powder, parsley, thyme, savory, and shallots in a stewpan.

  2. Stew the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Pound the stewed mixture.

  4. Add pickled tongue and cold butter to the mixture.

  5. Mix the mixture well with the beaten eggs.

Pot and bake

  1. Press the mixture tightly into small pots.

  2. Cover the pots with paper.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the pots cool.

  2. Pour clarified butter over the cooled tops.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat body, which sets firm and holds the potted texture when cooled.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds together and sets firm when baked.
Pickled tongue
Adds savory, salty meat flavor and a firmer, chewier bite to the spread.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and the cold butter keeps the texture silky after baking.
Shallots
Add mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften during stewing.

The step that matters

Stew the mixture for 10 minutes. Stewing cooks the raw veal and shallots before pounding and baking, so the flavors blend and the meat is tender rather than tough or raw in the finished pots.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, lemon, pepper, allspice, clove, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, lemon, pepper, allspice, clove, nutmeg. 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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