Skip to main content
Main

Potted Meats

A savory stew of minced veal simmered in gravy, thickened with flour and butter, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potted Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove 1/4 off your cold joint of veal and mince the rest very small.

  2. Put the minced veal into a saucepan with 1 pint of veal gravy or strong broth.

Make the dish

  1. Season with white pepper, grated lemon peel, nutmeg, and milk.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, and add a pinch of coarse sea salt and lemon juice.

  3. Stir over low heat until thoroughly hot, but do not let it boil.

Serve

  1. Serve in a soup dish with sippets of bread on the side.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold joint of veal
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the meat that is minced and heated.
Veal gravy or strong broth
Supplies the liquid that carries the minced meat and gives it savoury depth.
Flour and butter
Thicken the gravy so it clings to the minced meat rather than running thin.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the seasoned mixture.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until thoroughly hot, but do not let it boil. Boiling a thickened, milk-enriched mixture can cause it to separate and turn grainy, and overheating toughens minced meat. Gentle heat warms it evenly while keeping the texture smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, flour, butter, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, nutmeg, milk, flour, butter, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes