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Veal Cake

A baked veal cake with bacon, eggs, parsley, thyme, lemon rind, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Grease a cake tin and line the bottom and sides with slices of hard boiled egg.

  3. Cut the veal into dice and the bacon into strips.

Bake and serve

  1. Mix the thyme, grated lemon rind, pepper, and coarse sea salt into the white stock.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tin, placing the bacon mostly on top.

  3. Bake slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Allow to cool before turning out.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlets
Forms the bulk of the cake and sets into a sliceable, meaty texture.
White stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the meat slowly and gives it moisture.
Gelatin
Sets the stock as it cools, holding the cake together when turned out.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that bastes the meat from the top as it bakes.
Hard boiled eggs
Lines the tin to form a decorative layer that shows when the cake is sliced.

The step that matters

Bake slowly for 2 hours. Low, gentle heat keeps the veal tender and moist and lets the gelatin set without the stock boiling or drying out.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, parsley, lemon, pepper, gelatin):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, parsley, lemon, pepper, gelatin. 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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