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Meat Cakes

A savory dish of ground meat formed into cakes with bread, egg, butter, salt, and pepper, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Meat Cakes

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Meat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread in boiling water.

  2. Drain the soaked bread thoroughly.

Make the cakes

  1. Combine the chopped meat, egg, melted butter, salt, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Add the drained bread to the mixture.

  3. Form the mixture into cakes.

Cook

  1. Fry the cakes in a skillet until golden brown on both sides.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  5. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their savory flavor.
Egg
Binds the chopped meat together so the cakes hold their shape.
Bread
Adds moisture and softness, helping keep the cakes tender rather than dry.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Drain the soaked bread thoroughly. Excess water from the soaked bread would make the mixture wet and loose, so the cakes may fall apart or steam instead of browning when fried.

“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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