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Cold Meat and Scrap Cookery

A cold pâté made from sliced calf's head, lamb, tongue, eggs, bacon, and stock, baked and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cold Meat and Scrap Cookery

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meats and eggs

  1. Slice the calf's head, lamb, and tongue thinly.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Season the meats and eggs with salt, pepper, lemon peel, cayenne, and mushroom powder if desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the layers of meat and eggs alternately in a deep dish.

  2. Pour enough stock over the layers to form a jelly when cold.

  3. Cover with a flour and water paste.

  4. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cold, remove the paste, turn out the pâté, and garnish with parsley and pickled eggs.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 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

Cooked calf's head
Forms the main meaty body of the pâté, sliced into layers.
Cold lamb
Adds meaty layers and richer flavour to the pâté.
Pickled tongue
Adds meaty layers with a tangy, cured flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced layers that give the pâté structure and contrast.
Strong stock
Its natural gelatin sets into a jelly as the pâté cools, holding the layers together.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the meat layers.

The step that matters

Pouring enough stock over the layers. Meat gelatin in the stock must be enough to set into a firm jelly when cold. Too little stock leaves the pâté crumbly and dry once sliced.

“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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