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Meat Cakes

A savory dish of flattened mutton cakes seasoned with pepper, salt, onion or garlic juice, sweet herbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Meat Cakes

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Separate the fat and sinews from the leg of mutton.

  2. Beat the meat in a marble mortar with pepper, coarse sea salt, and onion or garlic juice, or sweet herbs to taste.

Shape and press

  1. Shape the prepared meat into flat cakes.

  2. Press the cakes between two dishes for 12 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cakes in butter and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leg of mutton
Provides the main meat, whose lean texture and fat form the body of the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, giving the cakes a rich flavour and golden browning.
Onion juice or garlic juice
Adds aromatic flavour to the meat.

The step that matters

Pressing the cakes for 12 hours. Pressing squeezes out moisture and compacts the meat so the cakes hold their flat shape and fry evenly rather than crumbling or steaming in the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter. 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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