Skip to main content
Main

Beef Cake

A baked beef loaf made with ground beef, suet, spices, and bacon, served with rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and pepper 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 ↓

Beef 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 the meat

  1. Mince the beef and suet together.

  2. Season the mixture with cloves, mace, and salt, adding cayenne pepper.

Layer and press

  1. Cut the bacon into thin slices and line the inside of a baking dish with it, leaving the bottom clear.

  2. Press the meat mixture into the dish tightly.

  3. Cover the meat with the remaining bacon slices.

  4. Place a plate upside down on top and weigh it down with something heavy.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2.5 hours if using 3 pounds of beef.

  2. Remove the bacon and serve with rich gravy.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Lean beef
Provides the main meat structure and savory bulk of the cake.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the mince moist and tender as it cooks.
Bacon
Lines and covers the cake, releasing fat that bastes the meat and adds savory flavor.
Ground cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavor to the meat.
Ground mace
Adds a delicate, nutmeg-like aroma that complements the beef.

The step that matters

Press the meat mixture into the dish tightly. Packing the mince firmly removes air pockets so the cake holds together when sliced. Loose packing lets the mixture crumble and cook unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove, pepper):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes