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Gateau of Cold Meat

A baked cake made from finely minced cold meat, eggs, stock, parsley, eschalot, butter, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley 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 ↓

Gateau of Cold Meat

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a plain tin and sprinkle it with bread crumbs.

  3. Finely mince the cold meat and place it in a basin.

  4. Chop the parsley and eschalot, then mix them with the meat.

  5. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Beat the yolks of the 3 eggs with the stock, strain it over the meat, and mix well.

  2. Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and bake for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn it onto a hot dish and pour some nice gravy around it.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the body of the cake and gives it its main flavour.
Eggs
Bind the minced meat together and help it set firm when baked.
Stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, keeping the mixture from drying out.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown lightly.
Brown bread crumbs
Coat the tin so the cake releases cleanly and gives a light crust.

The step that matters

Carefully turn it onto a hot dish. The cake is soft and set only by the eggs, so it can break if turned too quickly or before it has cooled slightly. Turning gently keeps its shape.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, parsley, egg, bread, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, parsley, egg, bread, pepper. 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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