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Dessert

Gateau of Cold Meat

A chilled meat cake made with cold meat, breadcrumbs, onion, suet, gravy, eggs, herbs, gelatine, chutney, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Gateau of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cold meat very finely and season it as for rissoles.

  2. Prepare a cake tin with a rich jelly made from Bovril stock thickened with gelatine, about 1 inch deep.

Make and set the cake

  1. Warm the seasoned meat mixture, add the eggs, and pour it into the tin.

  2. Set the mixture in the refrigerator until cold, then turn it out.

Serve

  1. Garnish with a small bunch of cress.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  5. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the bulk of the cake and gives it its savoury flavour and body.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the meat into a cuttable mass.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on gentle heat to hold the cake together.
Suet
Adds fat, which gives the mixture a softer, moister texture.
Gelatine
Sets the Bovril jelly so the cake holds its shape when turned out.

The step that matters

Set the mixture until cold before turning it out. Gelatine and egg need time to firm as they cool. Turning the cake out too early can make it collapse or break, so it must be fully chilled first.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, parsley, egg, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, parsley, egg, 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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