Name: To Pot Veal or Chicken with Ham
Ingredients: cold veal or white chicken; ham; butter; coarse sea salt; pepper; chopped parsley; hard-boiled eggs

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 ↓

To Pot Veal or Chicken with Ham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and layer

Pound cold veal or chicken and season it.
Layer the meat with layers of pounded or shredded ham in a small pot.
Press each layer down and cover with melted butter.
For added flavor, include chopped parsley and hard-boiled egg pieces between layers.

Serve

Slice and serve as a corner dish or side dish.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold veal or white chicken: Forms the main body of the dish, giving it a firm, sliceable texture.
Ham: Adds savory, salty flavor and a contrasting texture between the meat layers.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, coating the layers as it sets.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add soft, mild richness and body between the layers.

“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.