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To Pot Veal

A veal dish prepared by salting, soaking, drying, baking, beating with butter, and packing into pots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Pot Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA very cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cure the beef

  1. Rub the beef with saltpetre and let it sit overnight.

  2. Salt the beef with common salt and cover it with water for four days.

  3. Dry the beef with a cloth and season with black pepper.

Bake

  1. Place the beef in a small pan, cover with coarse paste, and bake at 300°F (150°C) for five hours without adding liquid.

Finish and pot

  1. Once cold, remove strings and fat, then beat the meat finely with warm butter and enough gravy to form a paste.

  2. Pack into small pots and cover with melted butter.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  2. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the body of the dish; long slow baking tenderises the meat until it can be beaten into a paste.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture, and seals the top of the pots.

The step that matters

Beating the meat with warm butter. The meat must be beaten finely while the butter is warm so the fat stays liquid and blends evenly. Cold or lumpy butter leaves a grainy paste that will not set smoothly.

“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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