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Beef or Mutton Cake

A baked meat cake made with beef or mutton, suet, spices, and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Beef or Mutton 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.

Prepare

  1. Chop the beef or mutton and suet finely.

  2. Mix the meat and suet with salt, cloves, mace, and cayenne.

  3. Line a round baking dish with bacon slices.

  4. Press the meat mixture into the dish and smooth the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with more bacon, place a plate on top with a weight.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours and 15 minutes.

  3. Remove the bacon before serving.

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. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Beef + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the main body of the cake, setting into a sliceable mass as it cooks.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and rich during the long bake.

The step that matters

Pressing the meat mixture firmly into the dish. Packing the meat tightly before baking removes air pockets so the cake holds together when sliced. Together with the weight on top, this compacts the mixture as it sets.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove. 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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