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Veal Cake

A steamed and baked veal cake made with bread crumbs, pork, cloves, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. 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

  1. Mix veal, bread crumbs, pork, salt, pepper, cayenne, and pounded cloves in a bowl.

  2. Add raw eggs and mix well.

  3. Transfer mixture into a plain mold.

Steam and dry

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Remove from steam and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven to dry slightly.

Serve

  1. Let cool, then turn out and cut into slices.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, giving it a firm, sliceable texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the mixture so it holds its shape.
Pork
Adds fat, which keeps the cooked cake moist and tender.
Raw eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the cake together.

The step that matters

Steaming for 2 hours. Gentle, steady steam cooks the egg-bound mixture evenly without drying it out. Too little steam or heat can leave the centre undercooked, while too much can make the texture rubbery.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, pork, pepper, egg):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, pork, pepper, 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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