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Rose Cakelets

A savory dish of eggs, cream, pork, onion, liver, cheese, toast, and tarragon vinegar, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rose Cakelets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cakelets

  1. Heat the cream in a pan until it boils.

  2. Break in the eggs, season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a 400°F (200°C) oven and bake for 3 minutes without hardening the yolks.

Cook the toppings

  1. In a hot frying pan, cook the diced pork until yellow.

  2. Add the minced onion and cook slowly until tender and yellow.

  3. Add a bit of butter and turn in the beaten eggs to scramble.

  4. Mix the grated cheese with the scrambled eggs or make an omelet.

Assemble and serve

  1. For a sauce, pour over the buttered toast and top with scrambled eggs and cheese.

  2. Butter a dish, drop in the eggs, and cook until the yolks are set.

  3. Top with the fried calf’s liver and onion, adding a dash of tarragon vinegar.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Pork + livertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a custard-like structure when cooked, giving the cakelets their body.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the set eggs.
Grated cheese
Melts into the scrambled eggs, adding savoury flavour and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps keep the eggs soft and glossy in the pan.
Calf’s liver
Adds a rich, savoury, meaty flavour as the topping.
Salt dried pork
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat as it cooks in the pan.

The step that matters

Baking the eggs without hardening the yolks. Eggs set through protein coagulation at moderate heat. Overbaking tightens the yolk proteins, making them firm and grainy instead of soft and creamy, so checking early matters.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, pepper, pork, butter, cheese, liver):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, pepper, pork, butter, cheese, liver. 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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