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Veal Cake

A baked cake made from sliced veal and lamb, seasoned with cayenne, salt, mace, parsley, shallot, and topped with hard‑boiled egg slices and veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. Grease a mold with butter.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the bottom with veal and lamb slices.

  2. Season with cayenne, coarse sea salt, beaten mace, parsley, and shallot.

  3. Add a layer of hard-boiled egg slices.

  4. Press down the layers firmly.

  5. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Prepare veal gravy by adding shreds of isinglass and straining it.

  2. Mix in a small quantity of catsup.

  3. Pour the gravy 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. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meaty body of the cake and sets firm when baked.
Lamb
Adds meaty flavour and moisture to the layers as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firmness and a sliced, set texture between the meat layers.
Isinglass
Gelatinous setting agent that helps the gravy firm up as it cools.

The step that matters

Press down the layers firmly. Firm pressing removes air pockets and keeps the layers bound together, so the cake holds its shape when turned out after cooling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, lamb, 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, lamb, 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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