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To Dress a Veal Pluck

A veal heart stuffed with breadcrumbs, suet, parsley, and seasonings, roasted and served with liver and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

To Dress a Veal Pluck

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the heart

  1. Wash the whole pluck and wipe it dry.

  2. Stuff the heart with bread crumbs, chopped suet, parsley, pepper, salt, egg, and milk.

  3. Roast the heart until cooked through, timing depends on size.

Make the hash

  1. Parboil the liver, then mince it finely with a portion of the liver.

  2. Stew the minced mixture for 30 minutes in the liquor from parboiling, adding chopped onion, pepper, salt, ketchup, and flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Slice the remaining liver and fry it.

  2. Fry a few slices of bacon alongside the liver.

  3. Place the heart in a dish, surround it with the hash, and arrange the liver and bacon slices alternately around it.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Veal + livertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 heart
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and stuffed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing a soft, binding body.
Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when roasted.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist during roasting.
Liver
Provides rich flavour and a firm, meaty texture in the hash and as a side.
Flour
Thickens the stewed hash liquor into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Roast the heart until cooked through. Veal heart is dense and thick, so its size changes how long it needs. Cooking it fully through ensures it is safe to eat and the stuffing sets, while the timing must be judged by size rather than a fixed number.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, parsley, pepper, egg, milk, liver. 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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