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Veal Cheese

A chilled veal terrine made with veal, broth, butter, spices, and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold cooked veal finely.

  2. Warm the veal slightly with strong broth or veal jelly.

  3. Add a little butter, pepper, salt, a dash of nutmeg, and grated lemon peel if desired.

Mold and set

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold, layering with slices of hard boiled eggs.

  2. Pack the mixture smoothly and set aside to harden.

  3. Serve cold.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked veal
Forms the main body of the cheese, setting into a sliceable mass once packed and cooled.
Strong broth or veal jelly
Binds the chopped meat together, as its natural gelatin helps the mixture firm up when cold.
Butter
Adds richness and moistness, softening the texture of the set meat.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide contrasting pale slices that show as a layer inside the molded cheese.

The step that matters

Pack the mixture smoothly and set aside to harden. Gelatin in the broth or jelly sets only as the mixture cools, so it must be packed firmly with no air pockets and left undisturbed long enough to firm. Packing loosely leaves gaps and a crumbly slice.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, pepper, lemon, egg. 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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