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Lean Meat Cakes

Lean meat cakes are small patties made from finely minced beef, cooked by slow boiling, served with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lean Meat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Remove all fat, fascia, connective tissue, and bone from the beef.

  2. Shred the meat on a board with a blunt knife until finely minced.

  3. Scrape the minced meat together with a spoon to remove tough parts.

Cook and serve

  1. Mold the scraped pulp into cakes about ½ to 1 inch thick.

  2. Slowly boil the cakes over a clear fire free from smoke.

  3. Serve on a hot plate with a little butter and season with pepper and salt.

  4. Add optional flavorings as desired.

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 + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Lean beef
Provides the protein that forms the cakes' meaty texture and main body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the cakes when served on the hot plate.

The step that matters

Scraping the minced meat. Scraping removes tough fibers and connective tissue left after mincing. Leaving them in gives chewy, uneven cakes, so the pulp should be smooth and free of gristle before molding.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, butter, pepper, sauce):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, butter, pepper, sauce. 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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