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Scrap Cakes

A fried cake made from cold cooked meat, egg, onion, herbs, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Scrap Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pass the cold cooked meat through a meat chopper.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat, egg, onion, parsley or sage, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add enough cracker crumbs to form a mixture that can be handled.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cakes.

  2. Dip each cake into beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  3. Fry the cakes in a mixture of butter and lard until golden brown.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked meat
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their savory flavor.
Egg
Binds the chopped meat together so the cakes hold their shape.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture so the mixture can be handled and shaped, and add structure to the coating.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that promotes browning and crisp, golden exteriors.

The step that matters

Adding the cracker crumbs. Crumbs should be added only until the mixture can be handled. Too few leaves it too wet and crumbly to shape, while too many makes the cakes dry and dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, parsley, pepper, butter. 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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