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G&Teau De Viande. — Meat Cake

A savory mutton meat cake with bacon, eggs, spices, brandy, and herbs, cooked slowly in a stewpan.

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 ↓

G&Teau De Viande. — Meat Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the mutton with a little beef suet.

  2. In a bowl, combine minced mutton, diced bacon, egg yolks, salt, ground spices, brandy, parsley, green onions, shallots, and mushrooms. Mix well and season to taste.

Stew and serve

  1. Place thin slices of bacon in a stewpan and add the mutton mixture on top.

  2. Let it stew for at least 3 hours.

  3. Once done, cool it and turn it out onto a dish.

  4. Gently scrape the bacon slices that adhere to the mutton and serve on a napkin in a dish.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the main body of the cake and gives it its meaty structure.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the mixture from drying out during stewing.
Egg yolks
Bind the minced ingredients together so the cake holds its shape when cooled.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Stew for at least 3 hours. Long, gentle stewing lets the tough mutton meat become tender and lets the egg yolks set the mixture into a firm cake. Stewing too hard can make the cake dry or crumbly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, meat, beef, egg, brandy, parsley, shallot):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, meat, beef, egg, brandy, parsley, shallot. 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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