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Meat Porcupine

A loaf of veal or lamb mixed with breadcrumbs or mashed potato, bacon, and seasonings, baked with bacon strips inserted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meat Porcupine

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 mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped veal or lamb, bread crumbs or mashed potato, and chopped bacon.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  3. Moisten the mixture with the beaten egg and enough stock or water to shape it.

Shape and bake

  1. Mould the mixture into an oval loaf and place it in a well-greased shallow pan.

  2. Make holes in the loaf with a skewer and insert the bacon strips, leaving ½ inch of the ends out. Firmly push the meat around the bacon.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown, allowing the bacon to baste the meat.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal or lamb
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the loaf.
Bread crumbs or mashed potato
Absorbs moisture and helps the loaf hold together with a tender texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the loaf keeps its shape when sliced.
Bacon
Adds fat and flavour, basting the meat from inside as it bakes.

The step that matters

Firmly pushing the meat around the bacon. Gaps between the bacon and meat let the loaf crumble and dry out. Packing the meat tightly keeps it bound and moist as it cooks.

“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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