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Veal Cake

A layered dish of stewed veal and bacon with hard‑boiled eggs, parsley, lemon peel, and rich gravy, chilled before serving.

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

  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 and chop some raw parsley finely.

Assemble and set

  1. In a mold or 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 layers until filled.

  5. Let it stand until completely cold, then turn out onto a flat dish.

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 meaty body of the cake, becoming tender and firm as it stews.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the lean veal layers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide firm, sliceable layers that hold their shape when the cake is turned out.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and concentrated meat flavor, and gelatin from the stock helps the mass set when cold.

The step that matters

Let it stand until completely cold. The cake only holds its shape once the gravy's gelatin has set on cooling. Turning it out early can cause it to collapse or fall apart.

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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