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Meat Cake

A loaf made from stale bread, onions, parsley, pepper, and chopped meat, baked with water and fat, served with a green salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Meat Cake

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat 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 loaf

  1. Soak stale bread in cold water, then press out and dry it completely.

  2. Mix the dry bread with finely chopped onions, parsley, and a little pepper.

  3. Add one-third to one-half of finely chopped left-over or fresh meat and mix well.

  4. Shape the mixture into a loaf.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the loaf in a baking dish and add boiling water and fat.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour, basting occasionally.

  3. Thicken the gravy with a little flour.

  4. Serve with a salad of greens.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked and dried, it absorbs and holds moisture so the loaf stays tender rather than dense.
Left-over or fresh meat
Forms the main body of the loaf and provides savory flavor and structure once baked.
Fat
Adds richness and moisture to the baking dish, helping the loaf brown and the gravy taste rounded.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a gravy.

The step that matters

Drying the soaked bread. Bread that stays wet adds excess moisture, making the loaf soggy and loose. Pressing it out thoroughly lets the binder hold the meat together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, pepper, meat, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, pepper, meat, 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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