Name: Veal Cake with Eggs
Ingredients: 6 to 8 hard-boiled eggs; cold chopped veal or ham; chopped parsley; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 1 tablespoon oil or butter; water

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 ↓

Veal Cake with Eggs

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.

Assemble

Cut the hard-boiled eggs in half and place some yolk pieces in the bottom of a small baking dish.
Layer with cold chopped veal or ham, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.
Repeat layers of eggs and meat until the dish is almost full.
Top with oil or butter.
Add enough water to cover the meat.

Bake and serve

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.
Press down with a large spoon.
Serve when cold.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,766 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled eggs: Form the set, sliceable layers and add richness through the yolks.
Veal or ham: Provides the meaty body and savoury flavour of the cake.
Oil or butter: Adds fat that keeps the top moist and gives a richer finish.

“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.