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Beef Cake

A patty made from minced roast beef, bacon, eggs, herbs, and seasonings, fried until golden and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Beef Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the beef and bacon.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, thyme, and parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Mix in the beaten eggs to form a cake.

  2. Fry in dripping or beef marrow until golden brown.

  3. Serve with brown 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,051 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tinned roast beef
Forms the main body of the patty and gives it its meaty flavour.
Cooked bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that keeps the minced mixture moist during frying.
Eggs
Bind the minced meat together so the mixture holds its cake shape.

The step that matters

Mix in the beaten eggs to form a cake. Too much mixing or too little binder can leave the patty crumbly or dense. Eggs set when heated and hold the minced meat together, so the mixture should be evenly combined and shaped firmly before frying.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

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