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Yorkshire Veal Cake

A baked veal cake with ham, eggs, and jellied gravy, seasoned with pepper, parsley, shallot, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Yorkshire Veal Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the eggs until hard, then let them cool and cut into slices.

  2. Cut the veal into neat pieces.

  3. Prepare a strong veal gravy that will jelly firmly when cold.

Assemble and bake

  1. In an earthen potting‑pan, layer the veal, ham, egg slices, and jellied gravy, seasoning each layer with pepper, parsley, shallot, and salt as needed.

  2. Cover the potting‑pan with a stiff paste made from flour and water.

  3. Place the potting‑pan in a dripping‑tin filled three‑quarters with boiling water.

  4. Add more boiling water as needed until the veal cake is done, about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Finish

  1. Let the cake cool, then turn it 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. 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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the meaty body of the cake and gives it its main flavour.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour that contrasts with the mild veal.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a firm, sliced layer that holds shape when the cake is cut.
Veal gravy
Supplies moisture and, when strongly set, gelatine that jellies the cake as it cools.
Flour and water paste
Forms a sealed crust that traps steam and moisture around the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Make the gravy strong enough to jelly. The gravy must set firmly when cold, because its gelatine binds the layers together and keeps the sliced cake from crumbling when turned out.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Spinachfits less well

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