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Meat Cake

A savory loaf made from cold meat scraps, potatoes, herbs, and breadcrumbs, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Meat Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat finely.

  2. Mash and beat the potatoes until light.

  3. Mix all the ingredients together.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a cake tin and sprinkle it with brown crumbs.

  2. Put the mixture in the tin or pile it in a flat baking dish.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes to 1 hour until nicely browned.

  4. Turn it onto a hot dish and serve with brown gravy.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat scraps
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the cake.
Potatoes
Adds moisture and a light, soft texture when mashed and beaten.
Bread crumbs
Bind the mixture and absorb moisture so it holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps it set when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until nicely browned. Baking long enough lets the surface brown and the mixture set firmly, so the cake holds its shape when turned out. Too short a bake leaves it soft and crumbly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, nutmeg, bread, parsley. 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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