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Veal Forcemeat

A mixture of finely chopped veal, bread crumbs, gravy, egg yolk, and butter, cooked until thick and formed into a ball.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

  1. Chop and pound the veal until very fine.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the veal gravy or white sauce.

  3. Press and drain the soaked bread to remove excess moisture.

  4. Heat the mixture over gentle heat until it thickens and can form a ball.

  5. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolk.

  6. Once cooled, combine with the prepared veal.

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

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

  3. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 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

Veal
Provides the main body and savory meat flavor of the forcemeat.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, helping the forcemeat hold together and stay tender.
Veal gravy or white sauce
Adds moisture and richness, and thickens into a binder when heated.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps set the mixture and add richness.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture over gentle heat until it thickens and can form a ball. Gentle heat thickens the binder without curdling the egg or toughening the meat. Overheating can cause the proteins to tighten and the mixture to turn grainy or dry, so the panada must be thick enough to hold a shape but still smooth.

“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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