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Veal for Lunch

A layered veal, ham, and hard‑boiled egg dish boiled in a stiff flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal for Lunch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bowl

  1. Butter a bowl and line it with thin slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Layer thin slices of veal in the bowl, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add a layer of ham, omitting the salt, then another layer of veal, alternating until the bowl is filled.

Seal and cook

  1. Make a stiff paste with flour and water, then cover the bowl's contents with the paste.

  2. Tie a double cotton cloth over the paste and place the bowl in a saucepan with water up to the rim.

  3. Boil for three hours, then remove from heat and let it cool overnight.

Serve

  1. The next day, turn it out and serve in very thin slices.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

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

Hard-boiled eggs
Form a firm, sliceable layer that adds contrast in each slice.
Veal
Provides the main meat layers, which turn tender through long, gentle cooking.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour between the layers of veal.
Flour
Forms a stiff paste that seals the bowl and holds in moisture during cooking.

The step that matters

Boil for three hours, then cool overnight. The bowl must stay sealed and the water must keep simmering, so the veal cooks gently and evenly without drying out. Cooling overnight lets the contents firm up so thin slices hold together.

“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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