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Veal Cream in Jelly

A chilled dish of veal and ham purée set in aspic with vegetables and truffle garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and beetroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 336 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Veal Cream in Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Line the mold

  1. Line a mold with aspic.

  2. Coat the mold with assorted cooked vegetables, arranging them fancifully.

  3. Set the vegetables with more aspic.

Make and set the filling

  1. Make a purée of veal, ham, béchamel, aspic, and whipped cream; fill the mold with this mixture.

  2. Set the mold on ice until firm.

Turn out and serve

  1. Turn out the mold onto a serving plate.

  2. Cut iced sauce à la barbo into dice and garnish the top of the mold.

  3. Dress additional vegetable pieces with olive oil and arrange them around the base.

  4. Use lemon slices to separate the vegetables from the jelly.

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. Turnip + beetroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + beetroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together699 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Cooked veal
Forms the main body of the purée, providing savory flavor and a tender texture.
Aspic
Gelatin-based jelly that sets the mold and holds the vegetables and purée in shape.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and richness, softening the purée's texture.
Cooked ham
Contributes savory, salty flavor to the purée.
Béchamel sauce
Binds the purée and adds creamy body and richness.

The step that matters

Setting the mold on ice until firm. Aspic is gelatin, which sets only when cold and softens at warm temperatures. The mold must be fully chilled before turning out, or the jelly will slump and lose its shape.

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, sauce, cream, truffle, carrot, turnip):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, sauce, cream, truffle, carrot, turnip. 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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