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Scalloped Minced Veal

A dish of minced veal and ham baked with bread crumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Scalloped Minced Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Stew the bones or trimmings of the ham and veal in water until the gravy is drawn.

Assemble and brown

  1. Combine the veal and ham with the gravy, Cayenne pepper, and mace in a stewpan and heat for 5 minutes.

  2. Transfer the meat to a scallop shell.

  3. Cover with seasoned bread crumbs and place thin slices of butter on top.

  4. Brown in a Dutch oven.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is heated in the gravy.
Ham or tongue
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the meat and gravy.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the topping and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Brown in a Dutch oven. The topping needs enough heat to brown without drying the meat beneath it. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs surface heat and a dry crust, so the topping should be watched closely.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, pepper, bread, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, pepper, bread, nutmeg, butter. 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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