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Bread

Elephant on Toast

A sandwich of minced cold meat topped with gravy on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Elephant on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Heat the cold meat in a stew pan with a little water until tender.

  2. Remove the meat and mince it very fine.

  3. Return the minced meat to the pan and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the bread slices and butter each one.

  2. Spread the minced meat over the buttered toast and pour gravy on top.

  3. Serve very hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the savoury filling that the whole dish is built around.
Bread
Provides a crisp base that holds the minced meat above it.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the toast.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour over the minced meat.

The step that matters

Heating the meat until tender. Gentle heating with a little water softens the meat's connective tissue and keeps it moist. Overheating or letting the water boil away dries the meat, making the minced filling tough and crumbly.

“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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