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To Dress Cold Meat

A sauce made by simmering cold meat with butter, flour, herbs, and gravy, finished with a vinegar‑egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Dress Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the cold meat, butter, flour, sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and a little gravy in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer gently for five minutes.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with a small amount of vinegar in a separate bowl.

  4. Heat the mixture over low heat until warm.

Serve

  1. Place the meat in a dish.

  2. Pour the mixture over the meat in the dish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thicken the sauce when gently heated.

The step that matters

Heat the egg yolk mixture over low heat until warm. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but high heat can scramble them into lumps. Keeping the heat low and the mixture moving helps it turn smooth and creamy.

“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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