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Veal Cake

A layered baked dish of veal, ham, eggs, parsley, and butter.

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

Veal 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.

Layer the pot

  1. Cut the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs in half and place some in the bottom of a pot.

  2. Add a little chopped parsley, then layer in slices of veal and ham.

  3. Continue layering with more egg halves, parsley, pepper, and salt until the pot is full.

  4. Pour in enough water to cover the ingredients and add the butter on top.

Bake and set

  1. Cover the pot with double paper and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Press the mixture together with a spoon and let it cool.

  3. Optionally, transfer to a small mold for a beautiful presentation as a side dish.

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

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 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. Ham + buttertop 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

Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the layers and help the mixture hold together when pressed.
Veal
Provides the main meat texture, becoming tender during the slow baking in water.
Ham
Adds salty, savory flavor to the layered meat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that carries flavor through the baked layers.

The step that matters

Pressing and cooling the mixture. Pressing while the contents are still warm helps the layers bind together as the proteins set during cooling, giving a sliceable cake rather than loose pieces.

“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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