Skip to main content
Main

Meat Loaf

A loaf of ground beef, veal, pork, egg, milk, bread, sage, salt, pepper, and bay leaves baked at 350°F for 2 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Meat Loaf

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

  1. Grind the beef, veal, and fresh pork together.

  2. In a bowl, combine the ground meat with the egg, milk, crumbed bread, ground sage, salt, and pepper.

Shape and bake

  1. Mould the mixture into a loaf shape and place it in a pan.

  2. Top with a few bay leaves.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 2 hours.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and fat that keeps the loaf juicy.
Veal
Adds a mild, tender texture to the ground meat blend.
Fresh pork
Contributes fat, which adds moisture and richness as the loaf cooks.
Egg
Binds the meat together so the loaf holds its shape when sliced.
Milk
Adds moisture that keeps the loaf tender rather than dry.
Bread
Soaks up liquid and keeps the meat soft and moist during baking.

The step that matters

Combining the meat with the binders. Mix just until evenly combined. Overworking ground meat develops its proteins and makes the loaf firm and dense, while gentle mixing keeps it tender.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, pork, egg, milk, bread, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, pork, egg, milk, bread, 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.

More meat loaf recipes

Cold 4 See all 69 →

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes