Name: Veal Cake
Ingredients: cold roast veal; cold ham; 2 hard-boiled eggs; 2 tablespoons minced parsley; pepper; strong stock

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Veal Cake

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

Remove the brown edges from the veal.
Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble and bake

In a mold, layer the veal, ham, eggs, and parsley, adding a little pepper between each layer.
Once the mold is full, pour in the strong stock to fill it.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Cool and serve

Let it cool, then turn it out of the mold.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,766 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast veal: Forms the main body of the cake and provides the meaty structure of each layer.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add firmness and a sliced set texture to the layers when cut and arranged.
Strong stock: Fills the mold and sets as it cools, binding the layers together with moisture and savoury flavour.
Cold ham: Adds savoury flavour and a contrasting layer that complements the veal.

“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.