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Cold Meat, En Persillade

Cold meat topped with parsley, shallot, butter, gravy, breadcrumbs, and optional Parmesan, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Meat, En Persillade

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Arrange the sliced meat in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse black pepper.

  3. Dot with small pieces of butter.

  4. Top with shredded parsley and shallot.

  5. Moisten with gravy.

  6. Thickly sprinkle with toasted bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  2. Add Parmesan cheese if desired.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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

Sliced cold meat
Forms the base of the dish and is warmed through during baking.
Butter
Melts over the meat, adding richness and helping the crumbs brown.
Toasted bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they bake.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, keeping the meat from drying out.
Shredded parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma that cuts through the richness.

The step that matters

Moisten with gravy. Cold meat dries out quickly in the oven, so enough gravy must reach it before baking to keep it tender and juicy.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, butter, parsley, bread, parmesan cheese):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, butter, parsley, bread, parmesan cheese. 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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