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Meat Cakes

A savory cake made with minced cold meat, flour, milk, eggs, and baking powder, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Meat Cakes

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Meat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Mince any kind of cold meat very finely.

  2. Season the minced meat with salt and pepper.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, make a batter using flour, milk, eggs, and baking powder, similar to flannel cake batter.

Cook and serve

  1. On a griddle, place one spoonful of batter, then one spoonful of the chopped meat, followed by another spoonful of batter.

  2. Cook until browned on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  3. Serve hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Provides the savory filling that forms the body of each cake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter that holds the cakes together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture to the batter, loosening it to a pourable consistency.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the batter rise and turn light and tender.

The step that matters

Cook until browned on one side, then turn and brown the other side.. Cooking over steady heat lets the batter set and brown before it is flipped. Flipping too early can tear the cakes apart, since the surface has not yet firmed up enough to hold the filling inside.

“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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