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Gateau of Cold Meat

A baked cake made from minced cold meat, shallot, butter, stock, parsley, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Gateau of Cold Meat

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a plain cake tin and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the minced meat, chopped parsley, and shallot in a basin, then season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  2. Beat the yolks of two eggs and one whole egg with the stock, then strain the mixture over the meat mixture and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes.

  2. Turn the cake onto a hot dish and serve with gravy poured around.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 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 meat
Forms the bulk of the cake and gives it its savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to hold the cake together.
Stock
Adds moisture and savour to the mixture so it does not dry out.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavour and a tender texture.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

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

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