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Meat Porcupine

A meatloaf made with veal, chicken, or lamb, bacon, breadcrumbs, and spices, baked with bacon strips inserted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Meat Porcupine

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the loaf

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat, cracker or bread crumbs, chopped bacon, salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice, beaten egg, and enough stock or water to shape the mixture.

  2. Mold the mixture into an oval loaf and place it in a well-greased shallow pan.

Add the bacon and bake

  1. Cut strips of fat bacon, each ¼ inch wide and 1 inch long.

  2. Make holes in the loaf with a skewer and insert the bacon strips, leaving half an inch of the ends exposed. Push the meat firmly around the bacon strips.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned, allowing the bacon to baste the meat.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean cooked meat
Forms the body of the loaf, giving it its bulk and chew.
Cracker or bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the loaf hold its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape when sliced.
Fat bacon
Melts as the loaf bakes, moistening the meat and adding savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Pushing the meat firmly around the bacon strips. Packing the meat snugly against the bacon removes air gaps and keeps the strips anchored, so the loaf holds together and the bacon bastes evenly as it cooks.

“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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