Name: Breakfast Dish of Cold Meat
Ingredients: cold meat, cut into 1-inch pieces; 2 tablespoons butter or cold gravy; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; 1 tablespoon flour

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Breakfast Dish of Cold Meat

Ingredients

cold meat, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons butter or cold gravy
pepper, to taste
coarse sea salt, to taste
1 tablespoon flour

Directions

Place the meat in a stewpan with butter or cold gravy.
Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Heat until the meat is very hot.
Add flour to thicken the gravy and stir well.
Serve immediately.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds richness and fat, helping coat the meat and carry flavor into the gravy.
Flour: Thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it body and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Add flour to thicken the gravy and stir well. Flour clumps if dropped in unstirred. Stirring it in evenly as the liquid heats disperses the starch so it thickens smoothly rather than forming lumps.

“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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Breakfast Dish of Cold Meat