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Dessert

Game Cake

A baked cake made from game meat, liver, ham, bacon fat, spices, eggs, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and truffle work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 516 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Game Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the paste

  1. Remove the flesh from the bones of the hare or game.

  2. Combine the game flesh with the same weight of calf's liver, ham, and bacon fat in a mortar.

  3. Pound the mixture with spices, coarse sea salt, minced shallot, and rum.

  4. Mix in the raw eggs and hare's blood if using hare.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a mold with slices of bacon fat.

  2. Layer the game paste and sliced truffles alternately in the mold.

  3. Cover with more bacon fat and place thick paper on top.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

Cool and serve

  1. Let it cool in the mold, then warm slightly to turn it out.

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. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Liver + truffletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + truffletop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together352 recipes

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

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Liver + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the paste and help it set firm when baked.
Calf's liver
Adds moisture and a smooth, tender texture to the paste.
Bacon fat
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the baked paste from drying out.
Hare
Provides the main meat flavour and the bulk of the paste.
Truffles
Add a strong aroma that perfumes the paste as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours. A low, slow oven lets the egg-bound paste set gently without curdling or drying out. Too much heat would toughen the eggs and squeeze out fat and moisture.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, ham, rum, egg, truffle):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, ham, rum, egg, truffle. 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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