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Marble Veal

A dish of stewed veal and dried tongue layered and baked with clarified butter, garnished with parsley.

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 pastes

  1. Boil and thinly slice the dried tongue.

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

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

Pot and serve

  1. Layer veal in potting pots, placing lumps of tongue over it.

  2. Press down hard and pour clarified butter over the top.

  3. 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

Butter
Binds the beaten meat into a smooth paste and seals the pots with richness.
Dried tongue
Provides the savoury, marbled meat layers that show when the pot is sliced.
Veal
Forms the mild meat base that is beaten and layered with the tongue.
Clarified butter
Poured over the top to exclude air and help preserve the pressed meat.

The step that matters

Press down hard and pour clarified butter over the top. Pressing removes air pockets so the layers bind into a dense, even block, and the clarified butter seals the surface against air, which helps the pot keep well.

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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