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Beef Cakes

Beef cakes are fried patties made from mashed potatoes, minced beef, egg, butter, and breadcrumbs, served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Beef Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the potatoes through a wire sieve using a wooden spoon.

  2. Add the minced beef, pepper, salt, half the egg, and melted butter; mix thoroughly.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into round cakes about ½ inch thick.

  2. Brush the cakes with the remaining egg and roll them in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown, then drain.

  2. Serve in a ring on a serviette or lace paper with parsley in the center.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Give the cakes body and a soft, moist interior once mashed through the sieve.
Minced beef
Provides the main filling and savoury meaty flavour of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and, brushed on top, helps the crumbs stick.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. Fat that is hot enough seals the crumb coating quickly, so the cakes brown crisply rather than absorbing grease and falling apart. Draining removes surplus fat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, egg, butter, bread, parsley. 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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