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Devilled Meat

Cold rare beef, underdone mutton, or roast turkey or chicken coated in a butter, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and cayenne sauce, then grilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Devilled Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a sauce by mixing butter, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and cayenne in a bowl.

Prepare and grill

  1. Make cuts in the meat with a knife and rub the sauce into the cuts.

  2. Heat a grill pan and rub it with a little butter.

  3. Grill the meat in the pan until heated through.

Serve

  1. 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + turkeytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sauce + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold rare beef or underdone mutton
Provides the main meat; cuts let the spiced sauce soak into the flesh.
Turkey or chicken wings and drumsticks
Provides the main meat; cuts let the spiced sauce soak into the flesh.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the sauce coat the meat and keep the pan from sticking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury depth and tang to the sauce.

The step that matters

Grill until heated through. The meat is already cooked, so the goal is only to warm it. Overheating dries it out and toughens the flesh, while cooking it gently keeps it juicy and lets the sauce cling to the cuts.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, turkey, butter, vinegar, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Onionfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, turkey, butter, vinegar, sauce, pepper. 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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