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Veal Cake

A baked veal and ham cake layered with spices, eggs, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal 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 mold

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a mold and layer it with thin slices of veal and ham.

Season and assemble

  1. Season the layers with cayenne, salt, mace, parsley, and shallot.

  2. Add slices of hard-boiled eggs and press down firmly.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

  2. Make a veal gravy by simmering isinglass in water, then strain it.

  3. Add catsup to the gravy and pour it over the veal cake while hot.

  4. Let it cool, then turn it out of the mold.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the cake and carries most of its meaty flavour.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour between the layers of veal.
Hard-boiled eggs
Hold their shape and show as a visible pattern when the cake is sliced.
Isinglass
A fish-derived gelatin that sets the veal gravy into a jelly as it cools.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy poured over the cake.

The step that matters

Pour the gravy over the cake while hot. Isinglass sets as it cools, so the gravy must be hot to spread and seep through the layers before it firms into a jelly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, ham, pepper, parsley, shallot, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, ham, pepper, parsley, shallot, egg. 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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