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Veal Cakes

A savory dish of veal and beef suet cakes flavored with lemon rind, mace, pepper, salt, and onion, pan‑fried until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine veal, beef suet, lemon rind, mace, pepper, salt, and onion in a bowl.

  2. Mix well and beat the mixture in a mortar until smooth.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in a hot skillet until nicely browned.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them meaty substance and structure.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the cakes moist and gives a rich texture as they cook.
White onion
Adds aromatic flavor and a little moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes in a hot skillet until browned. Enough heat is needed to brown the surface quickly, since browning creates flavor through the Maillard reaction. Too little heat lets the cakes steam and turn pale and greasy, while a cake that is too thick may stay raw in the center.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, beef, lemon, pepper, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, beef, lemon, pepper, onion. 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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