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Veal Cake

A baked cake of veal and ham slices layered with spices, parsley, shallot, and hard‑boiled eggs, topped with veal gravy and catsup.

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

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

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a mold.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the bottom with veal and ham slices.

  2. Season with cayenne, salt, mace, parsley, shallot, and hard-boiled egg slices. Press down the layers firmly.

  3. Bake until cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. Make veal gravy with Isinglass, strain it, and mix in catsup.

  2. Pour the hot gravy over the cake.

  3. Let it cool, then turn it out of the mold.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  4. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 and sets firm as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firmness and body to the layers once cooked and sliced.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that turns the gravy into a firm jelly as it cools.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a little firmness to the layers.

The step that matters

Pressing the layers firmly. Packing the layers tightly before baking removes air gaps so the cake holds together when turned out. Loose layers can crumble or split when unmoulded.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, veal, ham, pepper, parsley, shallot, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, ham, pepper, parsley, shallot, egg. 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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