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Meat Cake

A baked meat cake made with beef, veal, bacon, ham, herbs, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Meat Cake

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Meat Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Pound the beef and veal very fine in a marble mortar.

  2. Add lemon juice, pepper, salt, parsley, basil, thyme, mushrooms, savory, eschalots, beaten spices, and yolks of eggs to bind the mixture. Mix in the diced bacon and ham with your hands.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a stewpan or mold with strips of bacon and fill it with the meat mixture, pressing it down.

  2. Top with bay leaves and Rhine wine, then cover with more bacon strips.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until thoroughly cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, turn it out of the mold, trim it, and place it on a dish.

  2. Surround with chopped savory jelly and add a small modeled figure on top, or model the entire cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef fillet
Provides the main body and meaty texture of the cake once pounded and baked.
Lean veal
Adds tenderness and a mild flavor to the meat mixture.
Egg yolks
Bind the meat mixture so it holds together when pressed and baked.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean meat from drying out during baking.
Lean ham
Adds savory flavor and firmness through the diced pieces in the mixture.

The step that matters

Bake until thoroughly cooked. Raw egg yolk and meat in a dense loaf need to reach a fully cooked interior. Pressing the mixture firmly before baking helps it hold together and cook evenly.

Swap the basil

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom. 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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