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Veal Cake for a Side Dish

A layered veal and ham cake with eggs, butter, and gravy, baked as a side dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Veal Cake for a Side Dish

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

  1. Hard boil the eggs and cut the yolks in half.

  2. Butter a pot or mold.

Layer

  1. Layer some egg pieces in the bottom, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  2. Add a layer of veal and ham, seasoning between each layer.

  3. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used.

  4. Pour in enough gravy to reach the top of the meat.

Bake and cool

  1. Spread 1 ounce of butter on top and cover with double paper.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  3. Press down with a spoon and let cool completely.

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

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

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

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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

Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs form firm, sliceable layers that give the cake its structure and visual pattern.
Veal
Thin slices of meat set into a firm, sliceable texture as the cake bakes and cools.
Ham
Cured meat adds savory, salty flavor between the layers of veal.
Gravy
Fills the spaces between layers and keeps the meat moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the dish taste rounded.

The step that matters

Press down with a spoon and let cool completely. Pressing compacts the layers so they bind together, and full cooling lets the gelled gravy set, so the cake slices cleanly instead of crumbling.

“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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