Name: English Beef Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound cold roast meat; ¼ pound bacon or ham; 2 dashes pepper; 1 onion, chopped; 1 stalk celery, chopped; 1 sprig parsley, chopped; 2 eggs

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

English Beef Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Mince the beef very fine; if underdone, it will be better.
Chop the bacon or ham very small and mix with the minced beef.
Season the mixture with pepper.
Mince the onion, celery, and parsley or any herbs you prefer, and add to the beef mixture.
Beat the eggs and pour them into the mixture, combining well.

Form and fry

Form the mixture into small square cakes about ½ inch thick.
Fry the cakes in hot drippings until golden brown and serve hot.

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.

Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,810 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,518 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast meat: Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them their bulk and meaty flavour.
Eggs: Bind the minced mixture together so the cakes hold their shape when fried.
Bacon or ham: Adds fat and salty, smoky flavour that carries through the lean meat.
Onion: Adds aroma and savoury sweetness as it cooks into the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in hot drippings until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. If the pan is too cool, the cakes absorb grease, turn pale and soggy, and can fall apart before the centre is heated through.

Swap the onion

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

Carrotfits better
Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, pepper, celery, parsley, egg. 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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English Beef Cake