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Cakes

Cakes made from minced cold meat, bacon or ham, and optional ingredients, then fried or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cold meat, game, or poultry finely.

  2. Add a little fat bacon or ham, or an anchovy.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, and mix well.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes, about 3 inches long, 1.5 inches wide, and 0.5 inches thick.

  2. Fry the cakes until light brown, or place in a mold and boil or bake.

Serve

  1. Serve with good 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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Meat + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together335 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Anchovy + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the cakes and gives them their main flavour.
Fat bacon or ham
Adds fat that keeps the cakes moist and carries flavour during cooking.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes until light brown. Browning develops flavour and a crisp surface through Maillard reactions, while the cakes must be heated through. Too little heat leaves them pale and bland, and too much can scorch the outside before the centre warms.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, anchovy, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, anchovy, pepper, egg. 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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