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Veal Forcemeat

A finely chopped veal mixture with bread crumbs, butter, spices, and egg yolks, roasted and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Chop the veal very finely and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Mix in the bread crumbs, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and egg yolks.

Stuff and roast

  1. Sew up the head or bind it with broad tape to keep in the stuffing.

  2. Roast it before a clear fire, basting constantly for about 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with good gravy flavored with a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Boil the tongue and brains separately; serve the tongue in the center and the chopped brains around it with a few rashers of bacon.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main body and meaty flavour of the forcemeat.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and fat, giving the forcemeat a soft, sliceable body.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the lean veal moist and tender while roasting.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together and set during cooking to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Basting constantly while roasting. Lean veal has little fat of its own and dries out easily over a long roast. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, butter, pepper, 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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