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English Beef Cake

A patty made from minced roast beef, bacon or ham, onions, celery, parsley, eggs, and pepper, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 filling

  1. Mince the beef very fine, ensuring it is not undercooked.

  2. Chop the bacon or ham very small and mix with the minced beef.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper.

  4. Mince the onion, celery, and parsley, then add to the beef mixture.

  5. Beat the eggs and pour them into the mixture, combining well.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small square cakes about ½ inch thick.

  2. 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.

  1. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their meaty flavor.
Eggs
Bind the minced mixture so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Bacon or ham
Adds fat and salty, savory flavor throughout the mixture.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in hot drippings until golden brown. The beef is already cooked, so the goal is browning the surface. Hot fat drives the Maillard reaction, which creates golden color and savory flavor, while the eggs set inside the cake.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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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