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Veal Cake

A savory cake of stewed veal, bacon, and eggs, layered with parsley and lemon peel, topped with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Stew veal and bacon together with very little water, salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley until the veal is tender.

  2. Cut the veal and bacon into small square pieces.

  3. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble and set

  1. In a small bowl, layer the egg slices in a decorative pattern at the bottom.

  2. Sprinkle chopped parsley between the egg slices.

  3. Add layers of veal, bacon, and more egg, seasoning with pepper, salt, grated lemon peel, and parsley until the bowl is nearly full.

  4. Pour the rich gravy over the mixture.

  5. Let it cool completely, then turn out onto a flat dish.

  6. For best results, prepare the cake a day in advance.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 cake and becomes tender when stewed slowly in little water.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the veal layers as they cook.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a firm, sliced layer that holds shape and gives the cake its decorative look.
Gravy
Adds moisture and rich flavor, and sets as it cools to bind the layers together.

The step that matters

Let it cool completely before turning out. Gelatin-rich gravy sets as it cools, so the cake holds its shape only if it is fully chilled before being unmoulded; turning it out early can cause it to collapse.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, parsley, egg, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, parsley, egg, lemon. 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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