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Pressed Veal

A dish of finely minced veal mixed with butter, breadcrumbs, eggs, and seasonings, boiled in its own broth and chilled before slicing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pressed Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Stew the veal and save the broth.

  2. Cut the veal very fine and season with salt, pepper, parsley, and onion juice.

  3. Add melted butter, bread crumbs, and beaten eggs. Mix well.

Cook and press

  1. Tie the mixture in a bag and boil in the broth for 10 minutes.

  2. Place the bag under a heavy weight and refrigerate until cold.

Serve

  1. Slice and 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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 of the loaf, becoming firm and sliceable once pressed and chilled.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, helping the slices hold together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body, giving the mixture a softer, less dense texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the cooked meat from drying out.

The step that matters

Place the bag under a heavy weight and refrigerate until cold. Pressing while the mixture cools lets the proteins and fats set into a compact loaf, so slices hold their shape instead of crumbling.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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