Skip to main content
Main

Veal Loaf

A baked loaf of finely chopped veal mixed with salt pork, eggs, crackers, milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine the veal, salt pork, eggs, crushed crackers, milk, salt, pepper, and 2 tablespoons of butter. Mix the ingredients thoroughly until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into long rolls and place them in a baking dish. Dot the rolls with additional butter.

  2. Bake for 2 hours, basting often with a mixture of water and butter, slightly seasoned.

Serve

  1. Allow to cool before slicing.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the loaf and gives it its meaty structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Crackers
Absorb moisture and add bulk, helping keep the loaf tender.
Salt pork
Adds fat and richness, keeping the loaf moist during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and the basting helps the surface brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Allow to cool before slicing. A hot loaf is still soft and set only partly, so cutting it early can cause it to crumble. Resting lets the proteins firm up and the juices settle, giving clean slices.

“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.

More veal loaf recipes

You might also like