Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Meat

A savory dish of ground meat cooked with onions, herbs, milk, and flour, served on toast.

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

Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Creamed Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the ground meat with thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. In a skillet, fry the seasoned meat slowly.

Make the cream

  1. Add the chopped onions and flour, cooking for a few minutes.

  2. Gradually pour in the milk, stirring continuously.

  3. Cook on low heat for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the creamed meat on toast.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground meat
Forms the main body of the dish and provides savory flavor as it browns.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that becomes the sauce with the flour.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the fat.
Lard and butter
Provide fat for frying, carrying flavor and helping the meat brown.

The step that matters

Gradually pour in the milk, stirring continuously. Flour clumps if liquid is added too fast or unstirred. Adding milk slowly while stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, thyme, parsley, pepper, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, thyme, parsley, pepper, milk, flour, butter. 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes