Skip to main content
Main

Meat Cake

A baked meat cake made from beef, veal, bacon, ham, and seasonings, bound with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Meat Cake

Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Meat 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. Pound the beef and veal in a mortar until finely mixed.

  2. Add lemon juice, pepper, salt, parsley, basil, thyme, mushrooms, savory, shallots, beaten spices, and enough egg yolks to bind the mixture.

  3. Mix in diced bacon and ham with your hands.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a stewpan or mold with strips of bacon and fill it with the meat mixture, pressing it down firmly.

  2. Top with bay leaves and Rhenish wine, then cover with more bacon.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until thoroughly cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Once cooled, turn out of the mold, trim, and place on a dish.

  2. Garnish with chopped savory jelly and a small modeled figure on top, or model the entire cake.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump of beef
Provides the main body and firm, meaty texture of the cake.
Lean veal
Adds a tender, delicate texture to the mixed meat.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when baked and cooled.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the lean meat from drying out during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich meat.

The step that matters

Pressing the meat mixture into the mold. Firm pressing removes air pockets and packs the mixture evenly, so the cake holds together when turned out and slices cleanly without crumbling.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, mushroom. 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.

More meat cake recipes

Hare 6Cold 5Mutton 4 See all 13 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes