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Marble Veal

A veal dish prepared with sliced dried tongue, butter, mace, and stewed veal, layered and baked in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,268 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Marble Veal

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Boil, skin, and thinly slice the dried tongue.

  2. Beat the tongue with the butter and beaten mace until it forms a paste.

Pot and set

  1. Prepare some stewed veal and beat it in the same manner.

  2. Layer veal in potting-pots and add lumps of tongue on top.

  3. Press down hard and pour clarified butter over the mixture.

  4. Store in a dry place and slice to serve, garnishing with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

  4. Mace + vealtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Dried tongue
Forms the main savoury flavour and the paste's body when beaten with butter.
Butter
Binds the beaten meats into a smooth paste and adds richness and moisture.
Veal
Provides the second meat layer, adding bulk and a mild flavour to the paste.
Clarified butter
Poured over the top to seal the pots and exclude air, helping preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Press down hard and pour clarified butter over the mixture. Pressing removes air pockets so the paste packs densely, and a full clarified butter seal excludes air and oxygen, which slows spoilage and oxidation during storage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, parsley. 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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