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Veal Cake, Superior

A layered veal and ham cake set in gelatin and baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Cake, Superior

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine stock, onions, thyme, bay leaf, mace, and gelatine in a stewpan; heat and stir until gelatine dissolves.

  2. Once cooled, stir in beaten egg white and crushed shell to clarify.

  3. Boil, then simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat, let settle for 10 minutes, and strain through a jelly bag.

Layer and bake

  1. Pour a spoonful of jelly into a potting pan and let it cool.

  2. Layer with hard-boiled egg yolks, veal slices, salt, cayenne, parsley, shallot, and ham.

  3. Pour more jelly over each layer and repeat until the dish is full.

  4. Cover the pan tightly with a paste made of flour and water.

  5. Place it in a dripping tin filled with boiling water.

  6. Add more water as it boils away.

  7. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes to 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Cool and serve

  1. Remove from the oven and cool for several hours.

  2. Turn out onto a dish and garnish with parsley.

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. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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 sets firm as it cooks and cools.
Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm jelly that holds the layers together when turned out.
Bacon or ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a contrasting texture between the veal layers.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, crumbly texture to the layers.
Egg white
Clarifies the stock by collecting particles as it heats, leaving the jelly clear.

The step that matters

Clarifying the jelly. Stirring in the egg white and crushed shell and then simmering gently lets particles bind and rise, so the jelly stays clear. Boiling hard breaks up the clarifying crust and leaves the jelly cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, thyme, egg, veal, ham, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, thyme, egg, veal, ham, 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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