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Recipe for Meat Loaf

A loaf of seasoned pork mixture baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Recipe for Meat 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. Chop the hog cheek, head meat, back fat, tripe, and hog liver finely.

Mix and bake

  1. In a large bowl, mix the chopped meats with cracker meal, black pepper, mace, sugar, allspice, coarse sea salt, eggs, milk, butter, and onions.

  2. Transfer the mixture into regular loaf tins.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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 + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Hog cheek and head meat
Provides the lean meat that forms the main body and bite of the loaf.
Back fat
Adds fat that keeps the loaf moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the chopped meats together so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Cracker meal
Absorbs liquid and helps the mixture set into a firm, sliceable loaf.
Milk
Adds moisture that keeps the loaf from drying out during baking.
Butter
Contributes fat and richness, adding moisture and flavor to the loaf.

The step that matters

Chopping the meats finely. Fine, even pieces let the proteins and fats bind evenly with the eggs and cracker meal, so the loaf sets uniformly and slices cleanly rather than crumbling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, liver, pepper, sugar, allspice, egg, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, liver, pepper, sugar, allspice, egg, milk. 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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