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Meat Stuffing

A mixture of veal and beef suet seasoned with pepper, salt, herbs, eggs, and water, optionally flavored with shallots, mushrooms, truffles, or tongue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Meat Stuffing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pound the veal until fine.

  2. Pound the suet until fine.

  3. Mix the veal and suet together.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and fine herbs.

Bind and finish

  1. Stir in one egg and mix well.

  2. Add another egg and ½ cup of water, mixing until combined.

  3. Test the flavor by poaching a teaspoonful.

  4. If desired, mix in shallots, mushrooms, truffles, or bits of tongue for added flavor.

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. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the lean, tender body of the stuffing.
Beef kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help it set when cooked.
Water
Adds moisture that keeps the stuffing from drying out.

The step that matters

Test the flavor by poaching a teaspoonful. Raw meat mixtures taste bland and seasoning is hard to judge by eye. A small poached test shows how the cooked stuffing will taste, so salt and herbs can be adjusted before the whole batch is used.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, egg, pepper, mushroom, truffle):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, egg, pepper, mushroom, truffle. 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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