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Modern Cookery

A baked meat cake made from lean beef or mutton mixed with suet, spices, and optional aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

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 mixture

  1. Chop the fat of the meat and mix it with the lean meat.

  2. Add salt, cloves, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Optionally, include finely chopped onion, herbs, lemon peel, bacon, or mushrooms for flavor.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into cakes.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2½ hours.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Mace and pepper 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

Lean beef or mutton
Provides the main body and meaty structure that holds the cakes together when cooked.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during baking, keeping the cakes moist and rich.
Ground cloves
Contributes a warm, pungent aroma that flavours the meat.
Ground mace
Adds a delicate, warm spiciness that complements the meat.
Cayenne pepper
Adds a sharp background heat that balances the richness of the fat.

The step that matters

Baking the cakes. A long, moderate oven heat lets the fat render and the meat cook through gently. Too high a heat can dry the surface and leave the centre underdone, so keep the temperature steady.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, clove, 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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