Skip to main content
Main

Ghteau De Viande. — Meat Cake

A savory meat cake made from mutton, bacon, suet, eggs, spices, and vegetables, baked slowly with bacon layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Ghteau De Viande. — Meat Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix minced mutton, beef suet, diced bacon, egg yolks, salt, ground spices, brandy, parsley, green onions, shallots, and mushrooms in a bowl until well combined.

  2. Layer thin slices of bacon in a stewpan.

  3. Add the mutton mixture on top of the bacon, ensuring it is well mixed and seasoned.

Cook and serve

  1. Cover and let it stew on low heat for at least 3 hours.

  2. Once cooked and cooled, turn the meat cake out onto a dish, keeping the bacon slices attached.

  3. Gently scrape the bacon with a knife.

  4. Serve the meat cake on a napkin in a 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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the cake and provides the meaty, savory base.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when cooled and turned out.
Bacon
Lines the stewpan and adds fat and savory flavor that crisps and clings to the cake.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the mutton mixture moist and rich during slow stewing.

The step that matters

Stewing on low heat. Holding a low, steady heat for a long time lets the tough mutton become tender and the fat render without drying or toughening the mixture. Too much heat can make the meat seize and dry out.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, meat, beef, egg, brandy, parsley, shallot):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, meat, beef, egg, brandy, parsley, shallot. 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.

More meat cake recipes

Hare 6Cold 5Mutton 4 See all 13 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes