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Veal Cake

A baked dish of layered veal, ham, eggs, and parsley, bound with stock and flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Veal 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 mold

  1. Butter a plain mold or basin.

  2. Layer the bottom with some slices of hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Fill with layers of ham, veal, parsley, and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add more layers of sliced eggs.

  5. Press the meat down lightly with a spoon.

  6. Pour in stock to fill the mold.

  7. Cover with a paste made of flour and water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  2. Remove the paste and skim off any fat.

  3. Add a little more stock mixed with dissolved isinglass.

  4. When cold, turn out and arrange on a salad.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Veal
Forms the main body of the cake and sets firm as it cooks.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firmness and a sliced pattern when the cake is turned out.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour through the layers of meat.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that helps the cold cake hold its shape.
Butter
Greases the mold so the cake releases cleanly.

The step that matters

Press the meat down lightly with a spoon. Pressing the layers helps them pack together so the cake holds its shape when cold and turns out without falling apart.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, ham, veal, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, ham, veal, pepper, butter, flour. 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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