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Bordyke Veal Cake

A veal and bacon loaf seasoned with lemon rind, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and mace, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Bordyke 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.

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the veal and bacon separately, then mix them together in a bowl.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and mace to the meat mixture and combine well.

Bake and drain

  1. Press the mixture into a dish, making it higher in the center than at the edges.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

  3. Once baked, remove from the oven and let it drain on a strainer to remove excess fat.

Serve

  1. Serve hot or cold.

  2. If serving hot, warm slices in a Dutch oven or with 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it a firm, sliceable texture when baked.
Striped bacon
Adds fat and richness, keeping the lean veal moist as it bakes.
Grated nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavor to the meat.

The step that matters

Press the mixture into a dish higher in the center. Meat shrinks and releases fat as it bakes, and a domed shape helped by pressing firmly and evenly lets the cake cook through and drain evenly rather than pooling fat at one side.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, pepper, nutmeg. 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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