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Mixed or Deviled Meats

A preserved meat mixture of pork, tripe, beef, hearts, and spices, cooked and canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Mixed or Deviled Meats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 180°F (82°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Cook all the meats at 180°F (82°C).

  2. Grind and mix the meats while hot, adding the mixed spices evenly throughout the meats.

  3. Stuff the mixture into cans as hot as possible.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Celery + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,331 recipes

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

  5. Corn + celerytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork trimmings
Supply fat that gives the filling its richness and a moist, tender texture.
Tripe
Adds body and a soft, cohesive texture to the ground meat mixture.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp spices and salt in the mixture.
White corn meal
Binds the meats and helps hold moisture so the filling stays cohesive.

The step that matters

Stuffing the mixture hot. The meats are stuffed as hot as possible, so the mixture is still warm when filled into cans. Keeping it hot helps it flow into the cans evenly and reduces the time it sits before sealing and processing, which limits the room for bacterial growth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, beef, corn, pepper, meat, celery, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, corn, pepper, meat, celery, nutmeg. 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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