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Veal for Lunch

A layered veal dish boiled in a paste, served sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal for Lunch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bowl

  1. Butter a good-sized bowl.

  2. Line the bowl with thin slices of hard-boiled eggs.

Layer and seal

  1. Layer thin slices of veal in the bowl, seasoning with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Add a layer of ham, omitting the salt.

  3. Repeat the layers until the bowl is filled.

  4. Make a stiff paste with flour and water.

  5. Cover the bowl's contents with the paste.

  6. Tie a double cotton cloth over the paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the bowl in a saucepan with water up to the rim.

  2. Boil for three hours.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool overnight.

  4. Remove the cloth and paste.

  5. Turn out and slice to serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-boiled slices form a neat, firm layer that holds its shape when the loaf is sliced.
Veal
Provides the main meat layers, which turn tender and firm during long gentle cooking.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour between the veal layers.
Flour
Water-and-flour paste forms a sealed crust that holds moisture in the bowl during boiling.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at the rim during the three-hour boil. If the water level drops or the bowl is not well sealed, steam and moisture escape and the meat can dry out or cook unevenly. A tight paste seal and steady simmering keep the contents moist and evenly cooked.

“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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