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Beef Cakes for a Side Dish of Dressed Meat

Beef cakes are small patties made from underdone beef mixed with bacon or ham, seasoned, fried, and served in gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Cakes for a Side Dish of Dressed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the underdone beef with a little fat bacon or ham.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and a little shallot or garlic.

  3. Mix well and shape into small cakes, about 3 inches long and 1.5 inches wide and thick.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry the cakes in melted butter until light brown.

  2. Serve in a good thick 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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Beef + shallottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,103 recipes

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

  4. Beef + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the body of the cakes and gives them their meaty flavor and structure.
Fat bacon or ham
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the pounded beef from drying out as it cooks.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat to the surface and browns the outside of the cakes.
Shallot or garlic
Adds aromatic flavor that deepens the savory taste of the beef.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in melted butter until light brown. Frying over steady heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, which builds flavor. Too much heat can scorch the outside before the centre is cooked through, so watch the colour closely.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Onionfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, pepper, butter. 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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