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Raw Meat

A sandwich made with raw beef seasoned with coarse sea salt and allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Raw Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sprinkle raw beef with coarse sea salt and allspice.

  2. Spread seasoned beef on a thin slice of bread or between two slices to make a sandwich.

  3. 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.

  1. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  2. Beef + allspicetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,940 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Allspice + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together679 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw beef
Provides the savory, meaty body and texture of the sandwich.
Allspice
Adds a warm, slightly sweet, peppery aroma to the raw beef.
Bread
Holds the seasoned beef and gives the sandwich its structure.

The step that matters

Serve immediately. Raw beef is safe only when fresh and kept cold, because bacteria multiply quickly at warm temperatures. Seasoning it and letting it sit allows time for it to warm and spoil, so assemble and serve it right away.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread):

  1. Pepperfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread. 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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