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Dressing a Veal Pluck

A dish of boiled veal head, heart, and lungs served with brain and liver cakes, seasoned and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Dressing a Veal Pluck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

  1. Remove the eyes from the veal head and clean it.

  2. Boil the head, heart, and lungs for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Remove and dry the head and neck with a cloth.

  4. Rub the head with the beaten egg, then sprinkle with bread crumbs, pepper, and salt.

  5. Dot with small pieces of butter and place before a clear fire to brown lightly.

Make the hash and gravy

  1. Mince the lungs, heart, and part of the liver with onion, parsley, pepper, salt, flour, nutmeg, and ketchup.

  2. Mix and add some boiling liquor to form a gravy; simmer for 30 minutes.

Fry the cakes and serve

  1. Beat the brains with eggs, flour, parsley, pepper, salt, and milk to form a batter.

  2. Heat lard or dripping in a frying pan and fry the batter in small round cakes until browned on both sides.

  3. Dust the remaining liver slices with flour and fry them.

  4. Arrange the head on a dish, place the hash around it, and alternate slices of liver and brain cakes on top.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 head
Forms the main centrepiece, browned under heat for a golden surface.
Eggs
Bind the brain batter and the head's crust, helping the cakes hold together.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, lightly browned crust on the head.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown.
Flour
Thickens the hash gravy and lightly coats the batter and liver for frying.
Brains
Form the soft, delicate body of the batter cakes once beaten and fried.

The step that matters

Frying the brain batter cakes. Brains are delicate and the batter is loose, so the pan must be hot enough to brown the cakes quickly on both sides. Too little heat lets them spread and absorb fat, while too much burns the outside before the centre sets.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, bread, pepper, butter, parsley, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, pepper, butter, parsley, flour. 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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