Skip to main content
Main

Beef Cake

A baked beef loaf with carrots, onions, turnip, bacon, and gelatin, served with sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Cut the beefsteak into small, nearly square slices and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Roll the beef slices tightly.

Bake in a jar

  1. Place the carrot, onion, turnip, and bacon in a jar.

  2. Add the rolled beef on top of the vegetables.

  3. Mix the browning sauce with hot water and season with salt and pepper; pour over the meat.

  4. Cover the jar and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

Set and serve

  1. Remove the meat and vegetables; cut some carrot into fancy shapes.

  2. Arrange the fancy carrot shapes and hard-boiled egg slices in a pie dish.

  3. Place the cooked meat on top.

  4. Boil the cooking liquid, skim off grease, and add softened gelatine.

  5. Stir for a few minutes, then strain over the meat.

  6. Once firm, turn out the beef cake 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Forms the main body of the loaf and provides the meaty flavour and texture.
Gelatine
Sets the cooking liquid into a firm jelly that holds the loaf together when turned out.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, pale contrast in texture and appearance when sliced through the loaf.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat that flavours the cooking liquid and the meat as it bakes.

The step that matters

Skimming the cooking liquid before adding gelatine. Fat left on the liquid can float into the jelly and make it greasy and cloudy. Skimming removes it so the set gelatine is clear and clean-tasting.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, carrot, turnip, sauce, parsley, egg):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, carrot, turnip, sauce, parsley, 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.

More beef loaf recipes

Spiced 9 See all 201 →

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes